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Many researchers and institutions working on humpback whales in the region are uploading their humpback whale fluke images to the HappyWhale platform, and many between site matches of photo-identified whales have been discovered, some of them astonishing   In order to improve current understanding of the interchanges between south-western Indian Ocean breeding sites and others in the southern Hemisphere , IndoCet partners will collaborate on a wide-ranging effort to produce a scientific paper summarising exchanges revealed through HappyWhale recaptures. This will lay the foundation for more detailed analyses that are needed for population assessment and management.

The HappyWhale initiative will thus fit neatly within the framework of Theme 4 of the IWC Southern Ocean Research Partnership (IWC-SORP), which aims to assess the movements and extent of mixing of southern hemisphere humpback whale populations around Antarctica. Since 2009, considerable effort has been dedicated to the assessment of humpback whales in the Pacific region, but the focus has recently has been shifted to fill knowledge gaps for humpback whales along both coasts of the African continent, including around islands such as Sao Tome/Principe, Madagascar, the Mascarenes, Comoros and the Seychelles, and understanding their connections to Southern Ocean feeding grounds.  The theme leaders for this second phase are Els Vermeulen, from the Whale Unit, Mammal Research Institute, University of Pretoria, South Africa and Tim Collins, from the Global Conservation Program at the Wildlife Conservation Society, based in Kenya. The SORP website will be updated to reflect this change and more information will soon be forthcoming.

Contributor: Tim Collins