{"id":71765,"date":"2025-07-18T04:52:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T04:52:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/71765\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T04:52:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T04:52:13","slug":"major-change-seen-off-australias-coast-linked-to-worrying-event-thousands-of-kilometres-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/71765\/","title":{"rendered":"Major change seen off Australia’s coast linked to ‘worrying’ event thousands of kilometres away"},"content":{"rendered":"

Watching the migration of whales<\/a> up Australia\u2019s east coast, researchers have documented something \u201cworrying\u201d. Humpbacks<\/a> are leaving their northern breeding grounds for Antarctica three weeks early.<\/p>\n

While smaller fluctuations in their departure are normal, researchers from the University of Queensland have observed a \u201cclear and sustained change\u201d since 2021 and published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports<\/a>. Lead author, Associate Professor Rebecca Dunlop, believes there is likely a connection to warming waters<\/a> around Antarctica, as it causes:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n

    A depletion of sea ice<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  2. \n

    Which leads to a reduction in algae<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  3. \n

    And this means less food for krill<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  4. \n

    As a result, krill numbers drop, and there’s less food for humpbacks<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \u201cPost 2020, there has been a significant decline in sea ice, and it\u2019s during that period that they changed their migration,\u201d Dunlop told Yahoo News Australia.<\/p>\n

    “It seems they\u2019re returning to those feeding grounds earlier.\u201d<\/p>\n

    \"Two<\/p>\n

    Humpbacks travel up to 10,000km during their migration. Source: Bronwyn Keller<\/p>\n

    Why whales must accumulate huge amounts of blubber<\/p>\n

    To carry out their 10,000km migration, humpbacks need to build up an enormous amount of blubber.<\/p>\n

    Females face an even bigger challenge because they\u2019re normally pregnant as they travel to their winter breeding grounds, and then have to give birth and produce milk to sustain the calf.<\/p>\n

    During their time in the tropical north, they generally don\u2019t eat except for during the odd temporary stopover, adding pressure on them to return home to Antarctica as their energy runs out.<\/p>\n

    \u201cIf they’ve got less energy… then obviously that’s going to change how they behave and how they migrate,\u201d Dunlop said.<\/p>\n

    \n

    If the oceans keep warming and the sea ice keeps declining, then that has massive impacts, not just for whales, but for everything else that lives down there.Associate Professor Rebecca Dunlop<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    Two separate events could increase pressure on food resources<\/p>\n

    East Antarctic whale numbers plummeted to around 300 individuals in the 1960s, primarily due to hunting by the Soviets. After whaling was banned a decade later, numbers rebounded and in 2025 they\u2019re estimated to be close to 40,000.<\/p>\n

    \"The<\/p>\n

    After the United States and Russia, Australia is considered the world’s third-largest exporter of fossil fuels, the main drivers of climate change. Source: GREG WOOD\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

    Today, the population is thought to exceed pre-hunting numbers, which were thought to be roughly 30,000. There are concerns that vanishing krill combined with increasing humpback numbers could create a \u201cperfect storm\u201d of pressure on their food resources.<\/p>\n

    \u201cYou\u2019ve got this train crash happening where you\u2019ve got more whales trying to feed on less krill,\u201d Dunlop said.<\/p>\n

    \u201cWe have no idea what the carrying capacity is in the Antarctic, because we don\u2019t know what the krill density is. We don\u2019t know if the numbers have overshot, or what\u2019s going to happen in the future. Numbers might start to decline, or they might absolutely crash.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Love Australia’s weird and wonderful environment? \ud83d\udc0a\ud83e\udd98\ud83d\ude33 Get our <\/strong>new newsletter<\/strong><\/a> showcasing the week\u2019s best stories.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Watching the migration of whales up Australia\u2019s east coast, researchers have documented something \u201cworrying\u201d. Humpbacks are leaving their…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":71766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[50162,4740,50164,23254,159,50165,67,132,68,837,50163],"class_list":{"0":"post-71765","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-associate-professor-rebecca-dunlop","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-breeding-grounds","11":"tag-humpback-whales","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-the-university-of-queensland","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-wildlife","18":"tag-yahoo-news-australia"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114872447370304200","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}