For more than five months, a nine-year-old gray whale named Varvara traveled 13,987 miles from Russia to Mexico and back, breaking a mammalian migration record.
According to the Washington Post, authors of a study published in the journal Biology Letters detailed the huge migration journey. The previous record holder was a humpback whale that migrated 11,706 miles in 2011.
"The fact that endangered western gray whales have such a long range and interact with eastern gray whales was a surprise and leaves a lot of questions up in the air," study lead author Bruce Mate, director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University, said in a press release. "Past studies have indicated genetic differentiation between the species, but this suggests we may need to take a closer look."
Varvara made the trip with two other whales, a 13-year-old male named Flex and a 6-year-old female named Agent. The whales, tracked by satellite, fed off the coast in Russia and mated near Mexico.
Western North Pacific gray whales are a critically endangered species, so Varvara's long migration without eating took Mate by surprise. He told the Post the study has forced him to "revise my thinking completely" on gray whale migration.
"The ability of the whales to navigate across open water over tremendously long distances is impressive and suggests that some western gray whales might actually be eastern grays," Mate said in the release. "But that doesn't mean that there may not be some true western gray whales remaining.
"If so, then the number of true western gray whales is even smaller than we previously thought."
