Varvara, a gray whale from the western north Pacific swam around 14,000 miles journeying from Russia to Mexico and back again to Russia. She traveled the whole back and forth distance in a span of six months. Varvara was tagged with a satellite-tracking device so that her exact whereabouts and the distance traveled can be judged while she was swimming.
This is for the first time any mammal has crossed such a long distance for migration and hence it is a record.
The biologists from the International Whaling Commission were studying the migration process in whales to understand it better when they came across this accomplishment by Varvara. Exxon Neftegas Limited, OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute, U.S. Office of Naval Research and the Sakhalin Energy Investment Company are funding the study.
Gray whales have a unique migrating pattern and hence the biologists have been following especially those gray whales that migrate along the Russian coast in the waters of northwestern Pacific.
Epic Journey of Varvara
According to the Marine Mammal Institute of the Oregon State University researchers, the gray whale had already broken all the earlier records when she finished half of her journey of reaching the Mexico waters. The north-west Pacific’s Arctic waters near the Russian Sakhalin Island is her feeding area from where she started off to her breeding grounds in Mexico off the Cabo San Lucas coast.
Her travel from the feeding waters to the breeding grounds is the longest transoceanic voyage by any mammal. Her return voyage has added more miles to the record.
The Oregon State University revealed the information about this record through a press release. The western gray whales are considered endangered, but have always maintained good interaction with the eastern gray whales.
This new record by Varvara has initiated a discussion whether there is any difference between the western and the eastern gray whales. Although studies in the past have revealed a different set of genetic makeup between the two whales, more studies are needed in this direction.