Humpback whales unexpectedly returned early to the Antarctic Peninsula area where Vernadsky is located

Humpback whales have returned to the area of the Antarctic Peninsula, where the Ukrainian station "Akademik Vernadsky" is located.

This was reported by the National Antarctic Science Center.

This information is confirmed by the international resource Happywhale, where scientists and amateurs from all over the world upload photos of whale sightings.

According to him, the first humpbacks of this season were seen on October 20 and 22 by passengers of the Silver Wind ship in Dallmann Bay and Orne Bay. Ukrainian polar explorers registered the whales on October 25, but further south — in the Lemaire Strait.

This is currently the earliest spring registration of humpback whales in the Vernadsky area — both according to observations by Ukrainian scientists and according to Happywhale data.

Every year, in the spring, Southern Hemisphere humpback whales return from their breeding grounds near the equator to the krill-rich Antarctic waters. The Ukrainian station is visited mainly by representatives of the G population, which breeds off the western coasts of South and Central America.

In Antarctica, humpback whales will feed until late fall — that is, until May.

Comprehensive studies of cetaceans, which have been ongoing at Vernadsky since 2018, have shown that some of these animals remain here even in winter. Ukrainian biologists regularly observed them in June and July, and acoustic monitoring "detected" them in August as well.

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