DOI: 10.5061/dryad.bzkh189k2
title: Interbreeding area movement of an adult humpback whale between the East Pacific Ocean and Southwest Indian Ocean

description: Humpback whales undertake one of the longest known migrations of any
 mammal. While their migration route generally extends between latitudes,
 the breeding stocks are longitudinally separated and display high site
 fidelity to their feeding grounds. While there is an indication of certain
 breeding stocks overlapping with each other, the current information on
 the migration routes of humpback whales within the Southern Hemisphere
 limits our understanding on the extent of this exchange. Here, we present
 the longest documented great-circle distance between sightings on
 wintering grounds of two different Ocean basins of an adult male humpback
 whale between two breeding stocks in the eastern Pacific (stock G) and
 Southwest Indian Ocean (stock C). These two stocks were separated by a
 minimum of 120° longitude, and 13,046 km of a great-circle distance. These
 extreme distances movements demonstrate behavioural plasticity, which may
 play an important role in adaptation strategies to global environmental
 changes and might be an evolved response to various pressures and
 underline the importance of consolidation of the global datasets on wide
 ranging marine mammals.
description: The data have been collected on the dedicated vessel-based
 surveys in Colombia and Tanzania. Location, behaviour, group type, group
 size, spatial distribution, and photo-identification images were collected
 in all locations. Fluke images were uploaded to Happywhale.com a web-based
 cetacean photo-ID platform.
description: # Interbreeding area movement of an adult humpback whale between the East
 Pacific Ocean and Southwest Indian Ocean
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.bzkh189k2](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.bzkh189k2) ## Description of the data and file structure The GIS coordinates for the encountered individual Humpback Whale (*Megaptera novaeangliae*) on a small boat surveys in Colombia and Zanzibar have been obtained along with the following data - species, country, date, coordinates, group size and group type.  ### Files and variables #### File: Sighting\_Coordinates\_Colombia\_Zanzibar\_Data.xls **Description: **  The dataset contains records of the humpback whale encountered on a dedicated vessel based surveys in the northern Colombian Pacific in 2013 and 2017, and in Southwest Indian Ocean in 2022, and consist of the 3 records of the same humpback whale individual, with indication of the country and date where and when it was encountered, as well as coordinates of each sighting, group size and cohesion which the individual was part of.  Each row represents one sighting.  ##### Variables (columns description): * 'ID'. This column represents the ID of the particular sighting in the given dataset.  * 'Species'. This column indicates confidently identified species, in this case 'MN' that stands for *Megaptera novaeangliae* - a scientific name of the species for humpback whale.  * 'Country'. This column indicates the study site, in this case the data comes from two study sites, located in Colombia and Zanzibar.  * 'Date'. This column represents the date of the sighting - particular day when the individual humpback whale, described in the manuscript, was encountered in each study site.  * 'Latitude'. In this column the latitude of the geographical location of sightings is presented in Decimals Degrees (DD) format.  * 'Longitude'. In this column the longitude of the geographical location of sightings is presented in Decimals Degrees (DD) format. * 'Group size'. This column represent the total number of individuals of each group of humpback whales encountered for each sighting in each location.   * 'Groupe type'. This column represents identified group type as per following definition and abbreviations: Adults Only (AA), Competitive group (COM). *