In a whale migration of epic proportions, a humpback has been recorded making a journey of more than 8,077 miles from Colombia to Tanzania.

A team of marine ecologists says it’s the longest individual whale migration ever recorded, topping the old record of 6,214 miles.

“Humpback whales have complex behavior, but to find an adult male whale halfway around the world is unexpected,” said co-author of the research Ted Cheeseman, a whale biologist at Southern Cross University, as reported by Science.

Cheeseman explained that, while a whale will sometimes move from one group to a different one nearby, in order to get all the way to Tanzania the humpback would have had to pass through two Atlantic-based groups.

“This is more ‘foreign’ than any humpback previously documented,” Cheeseman noted.

The observation of the whale’s extraordinary journey was enabled by modified facial recognition software that was designed to identify whales by the distinct shapes of their flukes.

Photos helped identify the whale in three locations. Kalashnikova et al., Royal Society Open Science, 2024

These “flukeprints” have saved marine scientists many hours of looking over photos in the hopes of uncovering a match based on distinctive markings such as scars, notches and color patterns, said marine mammal biologist Christie McMillan with the Fisheries and Oceans Canada Cetacean Research Program, who did not participate in the study.

A flukeprint is as unique as a fingerprint.

“It’s like a five-metre banner of their ID,” said Cheeseman, as The Guardian reported.

According to McMillan, the identification of the humpback who made the incredible journey is a testament to the usefulness of Happywhale.com, a fluke-identification program co-founded by Cheeseman 15 years ago that examines photographs by biologists as well as ordinary people, reported Science.

After decades of leading nature tours in polar regions, Cheeseman found that regular citizens like his customers could be a valuable source of data.

Dr. Vanessa Pirotta, a whale scientist who was not part of the research team, said the technology could “take a single day of whale watching and turn it into something remarkable,” as The Guardian reported.

Happywhale “is an incredibly valuable tool” that “has allowed for collaboration at a scale that could not have been possible before,” McMillan said in Science.

The Happywhale software compares each fluke image with more than 900,000 photographs from all over the world. Cheeseman said the database includes images of 109,000 individuals, including an “Old Timer” first spotted in 1972 who was seen again this past summer.

In 2013 and 2017, Happywhale identified the record-breaking humpback around summer breeding grounds off the coast of Colombia. In 2022, the whale was spotted again, this time near Zanzibar — an archipelago that is part of Tanzania — off the eastern African coast. The humpback’s distinctive fluke pattern matched the previous images captured in the eastern Pacific.

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The finding was surprising since humpbacks normally stay in the same ocean basin, plus the Colombia population typically migrates from its breeding grounds in South America to Antarctica feeding grounds.

“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,” the study published in Royal Society Open Science said.

The researchers aren’t sure where the record-setting humpback traveled between sightings, but it is likely that the whale went to Antarctica before the southwestern Indian Ocean, the home of another breeding population, according to co-author of the study Ekaterina Kalashnikova, a marine biologist with the Bazaruto Center for Scientific Studies and founder of the Tanzania Cetaceans Program.

It is “very likely the distances [the animal swam] were even greater” than the documented distance, Kalashinikova said, as reported by Science.

“This could be a simple story of a deeply confused whale,” said marine biologist Alexander Werth of Hampden-Sydney College, who was not part of the research. “But it’s more likely that this intrepid explorer is a lonely male desperately seeking mates.”

The findings demonstrate Happywhale’s potential to leverage the observations of citizen scientists to add vital data in understudied areas of cetacean research, said marine biologist Lisa Kettemer with the Arctic University of Norway, who was not involved in the research.

“We are learning way more because we have the tools in place,” Pirotta said, as The Guardian reported. “As a world we are way more connected, and that means that the stories that we can tell about whales are more connected globally than ever before.”

Researchers weren’t yet sure if the new technology was providing more information about established whale movements or if the unusual patterns indicated a changing environment impacted by climate change.

“This extreme distance movement demonstrates behavioural plasticity, which may play an important role in adaptation strategies to global environmental changes and perhaps be an evolved response to various pressures, underlining the importance of consolidation of global datasets on wide-ranging marine mammals,” the study said.

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The approval of plans for an oil and gas lease sale in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by the outgoing Biden administration on Monday will keep the door open for drilling in the pristine wildlands.

The sale, to be held on January 9, will include a smaller portion of the total land that was made available for bidding about four years ago during the Trump administration, reported The Associated Press.

“Drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is all risk with no reward,” said attorney for Earthjustice Erik Grafe, who has been a leader in litigation to protect the wildlife refuge, in a press release from Earthjustice. “Oil drilling would destroy this beautiful land, held sacred by Gwich’in people, and would further destabilize the global climate, but it offers zero benefit to taxpayers or consumers.”

In his promise to expand oil and gas drilling in the United States, President-elect Donald Trump referenced a law passed in 2017 that enabled the announcement.

The 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act — passed during Trump’s first term as president — included a requirement that two lease sales in the Arctic Refuge be held by the U.S. Department of the Interior before the end of this year, the press release said. The sale just approved by the Biden administration will be the second.

The first was held in 2021 by the Trump administration and generated just one percent of the estimated revenue promised to U.S. taxpayers when the leasing mandate was approved by Congress.

“Few oil companies bid, since banks and insurance companies wary of the high risk refused to back drilling programs there. Although the volume of recoverable oil in the Refuge is unknown, climate scientists have warned for decades that extracting and burning any amount of oil will accelerate climate change consequences such as droughts, heat waves, wildfires and extreme storm events,” Earthjustice said. “Pumping oil from the Arctic Refuge won’t result in lower oil prices, according to the federal Energy Information Administration, and building the necessary infrastructure would take decades.”

After a review of the leasing program by the Biden administration, seven leases made during the first sale were canceled, The Associated Press reported. Litigation around the cancellation is still pending.

The first lease sale is still being delayed by ongoing lawsuits, with environmentalists promising to bring them to court in order to stop drilling in the refuge.

“Congress should restore protections for the coastal plain rather than continue allowing these lands to be used as a political pawn,” said Brook Brisson, Trustees for Alaska senior staff attorney, as reported by the Anchorage Daily News. “We will stand with our clients, partners, and the majority of Americans in opposing the leasing of these lands and if that means challenging unlawful decisions in court, we’re prepared to do that again.”

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) said a formal decision to approve the lease sale has been issued for the refuge’s 1.6-million-acre coastal plain. The coastal plain is a vast wildlife refuge bordering the Beaufort Sea. The refuge is the habitat of caribou, polar bears, musk oxen and an array of bird species. The debate about whether to make the coastal plain available for oil drilling has been going on for decades.

Business groups, North Slope leaders and Alaska state politicians have been hoping for oil exploration in the delicately balanced ecosystem of the refuge. However, they complained that the amount of land being offered for lease — the minimum permitted by law — was not enough and could hamper bidding.

Some of the state’s political leaders have also expressed frustration with constraints on the planned lease sale. President of advocacy group Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat Nagruk Harcharek referred to the lease sale as “a deliberate attempt by the Biden administration’s Interior Department to kneecap the potential of development” in the wildlife refuge, as The Associated Press reported.

Some Alaska Tribes and conservation groups criticized the decision as having the potential to ramp up global heating if it means oil production in the region, while also putting caribou and other wildlife species at risk.

RaeAnn Garnett, Tribal government first chief of the Native Village of Venetie, said drilling in the refuge would amount to a “direct threat” to the Porcupine caribou herd and the Neets’ajj Gwich’in way of life.

“Our people have relied on this herd for our subsistence practices since time immemorial and expect to be able to rely on it for generations to come,” Garnett said, as reported by the Anchorage Daily News. “Any oil and gas development poses an undeniable threat to the caribou migration routes, which will impact our traditional subsistence-based way of life.”

According to the BLM, plans for potential development or exploration made after any oil leases are issued for the refuge would be subject to environmental review, The Associated Press reported.

“We’re committed to going to court as often as necessary to defend the Arctic Refuge from oil drilling and will work toward a more sustainable future that does not depend on ever-expanding oil extraction,” Grafe said in the press release.

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According to a new report from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), more than three-quarters of the world’s land has become permanently dryer over the course of recent decades.

A combined area half as big as Australia has gone from being humid lands to drylands – an arid area with less rain for nature, pastures, crops and people.

“For the first time, scientists within UNCCD Science-Policy Interface have clearly documented current and future drying trends and impacts that reveal a global, existential peril previously shrouded by a fog of scientific uncertainty. Its name is aridity — the climatic and enduring condition of too little life-supporting moisture — and its effects threaten the lives and livelihoods of billions across almost every region of the globe,” the report said.

Forty percent of all the lands on Earth, excluding Antarctica, are now made up of drylands, reported The Guardian.

These changes over the past three decades are likely to be permanent because, as the report points out, “droughts end, and recovery is possible.”

“Droughts happen when the rain doesn’t fall or falls too little for extended but nevertheless limited periods,” the authors of the report wrote. “Rising aridity is different — it is an unrelenting menace that requires lasting adaptation measures. The drier climates now affecting vast regions across the globe will not return to how they were.”

Currently, one-quarter of the world’s population inhabits expanding drylands. Aridity projections suggest up to five billion people could live in drylands by 2100. All these people are either at risk of desertification or will be in the future. This can leave water scarce and people dehydrated or hungry, with ecosystems totally transformed.

“Human-caused climate change is the culprit; known for making the planet warmer, it is also making more and more land drier. The result is poor soil fertility, crop losses, biodiversity declines, intense sand and dust storms, frequent wildfires and, of course, greater food and water insecurity. Aridity-related water scarcity is causing illness and death and spurring large-scale forced migration around the world,” the report said.

Roughly 12 percent of Africa’s gross domestic product was lost from 1990 to 2015 due to increasing aridity.

“Unlike droughts – temporary periods of low rainfall – aridity represents a permanent, unrelenting transformation,” said Ibrahim Thiaw, UNCCD executive secretary, as The Guardian reported. “Droughts end. When an area’s climate becomes drier, however, the ability to return to previous conditions is lost.”

The drying landscape will affect some crops more than others. For instance, if current trends continue, maize output is predicted to be cut in half in Kenya by mid-century.

Drylands are areas where most of the rainfall — 90 percent — is lost to evaporation. This leaves just 10 percent to support vegetation. By 2050, two-thirds of lands worldwide will store less water, the report said.

The failure of humans to adequately mitigate greenhouse gas emissions has contributed to the global water crisis.

“Rising aridity deepens poverty, forces over-exploitation of fragile resources and accelerates land degradation, creating a vicious cycle of resource scarcity, water insecurity and diminished agricultural potential,” Kate Gannon, a London School of Economics Grantham Institute research fellow, told The Guardian. “These communities, with the least capacity to adapt, face dire consequences to health, nutrition and wellbeing from risks of food shortages, displacement, and forced migration. This is not only a profound injustice, but also a global challenge.”

Those inhabiting drylands across the world have doubled in recent decades from 1.2 billion in 1990 to 2.3 billion in 2020. If carbon emissions are not significantly reduced by the end of the century, that number is projected to double.

“For the first time, a UN scientific body is warning that burning fossil fuels is causing permanent drying across much of the world, with potentially catastrophic impacts affecting access to water that could push people and nature even closer to disastrous tipping points,” said UNCCD chief scientist Barron Orr, as reported by The Guardian. 

Mark Maslin, a University College London Earth system science professor, who was not part of the study, said the report was a warning, as well as “a call to politicians that there are solutions.”

“First: we can curb greenhouse gas emissions, which will reduce climate change and global aridification. Second, we can acknowledge the world is drying and take measures to slow it down and to adapt to it,” Maslin said, as The Guardian reported. “We now have so many solutions: sustainable agriculture, water management, reforestation and rewilding to education and awareness building. Ultimately good local and national governance is required to deal with the desertification of our precious life-giving planet.”

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Wisdom, a 74-year-old Laysan albatross, is the oldest-known wild bird on the planet. First fitted with a band in 1956, the Hawaiian seabird has laid her first egg in four years, according to United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) officials.

Wisdom returned to the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge to lay what could be her 60th egg, USFWS said, as reported by The Guardian.

“We are optimistic that the egg will hatch,” Jonathan Plissner, Midway Atoll’s supervisory wildlife biologist, said in a statement, as The Associated Press reported.

Wisdom, at left with red leg tag, stays close to her recently laid egg as her new mate settles down to incubate from their ground nest on Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge on Nov. 27, 2024. Dan Rapp / USFWS volunteer

Millions of seabirds come back to Midway Atoll each year to nest and rear their chicks.

Wisdom and lifelong mate Akeakamai had been returning to the Hawaiian atoll to lay and hatch their eggs since 2006. However, it has been several years since Akeakamai has been seen, and Wisdom started interacting with another male upon her return last week, officials said.

Laysan albatrosses lay one egg each year, and, according to Plissner, Wisdom has raised up to 30 chicks.

October and November represent mating season at the refuge. Albatross parents share the incubation of an egg for roughly seven months. They then fly thousands of miles over the ocean in search of food to bring back to their young.

Wisdom stands at right with red leg band, facing her new partner at Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge on Nov. 26, 2024. Dan Rapp / USFWS volunteer

About five or six months after they hatch, chicks fly out to sea, where they will spend most of their lives soaring above the ocean feeding on fish and their eggs, crustaceans and squid.

Adult Laysan albatrosses fly as much as 50,000 miles each year, so USFWS said Wisdom would by now have flown multiple trips to the moon and back, reported CNN.

“It’s really amazing to encounter the world’s oldest known wild bird and see her add to the record year after year, but it fascinates because of its apparent uniqueness and not for any scientific or conservation or management implications. It’s interesting that the next oldest bird here that we know about is currently just 45+ years old. Almost thirty years apart in age is a big gap, especially with the tremendous number of albatross that were banded here in the 1960s,” Plissner said, according to USFWS.

Laysan albatrosses typically live to be 68 years old, the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration has said.

As many as three million Laysan albatrosses travel to the Midway Atoll wildlife refuge to breed, Plissner told BBC Radio 4’s Today program. The atoll is not part of the state of Hawaii, but is an unincorporated U.S. territory. The largest albatross colony on Earth lives at the refuge.

“It’s really been remarkable,” Plissner said, as BBC News reported. “Wisdom seems to pique the interest of people across the world. We wait each year with bated breath for her return.”

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The United Kingdom set a new record for electric vehicle (EV) sales in November, with more than 25 percent of total car registrations being for EVs, according to the most recent statistics from New AutoMotive.

The latest figures mean EV sales in the country have held more than 20 percent of the market share for the fourth month in a row — also a record-breaking number, reported Transport and Energy.

“November’s record EV registration figures – up over 50% compared to Nov 2023 – show that consumers are busting the myth that EV sales are falling. The ZEV Mandate is working and increasing numbers of buyers are recognising the hi-tech value and lower running costs of electric cars,” said Quentin Willson, advisory board member of EVUK and founder of FairCharge, as Transport and Energy reported.

Sales of gas-powered cars in Britain have fallen to a record low as manufacturers conserve supplies in order to meet strict EV targets, reported The Telegraph.

Only 29 percent of new car sales last month were fossil fuel vehicles, a New Automotive analysis of registrations said — down from 42 percent the previous year.

According to Auto Trader, gas-powered cars will “peak” in 2024 before going into permanent decline. The number of fossil fuel vehicles is predicted to fall from 18.7 to 11.1 million in the coming decade, Auto Trader said.

“Peak petrol is a genuine landmark for the UK. We expect to see a seismic shift in British motoring over the next decade as the number of petrol cars falls by nearly half and EVs take a much bigger share,” said Ian Plummer, commercial director for Auto Trader, as Transport and Energy reported.

Meanwhile, EV numbers are expected to rise from 1.25 to 13.7 million, The Telegraph said.

The big market shift is being pushed by government “ZEV mandates” — legally enforced EV sales targets — that compel manufacturers and drivers to transition to EVs.

The rules stipulate that 22 percent of auto sales must be electric in 2024, rising to 28 percent in 2025, with an annual increase reaching 80 percent by the end of the decade.

Manufacturers that go over the sales limit for gas-powered cars could be fined as much as 15,000 pounds per vehicle, though there are “flexibilities” built into the mandate, like carbon credit trading.

Some manufacturers — including Ford, Nissan and Stellantis — say the rules are too stringent, with consumer demand not as strong as expected and EV prices continuing to deter a number of drivers.

Manufacturers are encouraging ministers to either relax the requirements or use consumer incentives to increase EV demand.

“New AutoMotive’s analysis of public data reflects the fact that the car industry has stepped up and introduced more affordable models, which is clearly having a positive impact on the uptake of electric vehicles. However, registrations to fleets and businesses – both heavily incentivised – are still driving this switch in the main, which is perfectly reasonable for a new technology,” said Ginny Buckley, founder of Electrifying.com, as reported by Transport and Energy. “However, to enable more private buyers to embark on their electric journey, the Government needs to introduce incentives for both new and used electric cars. Buoyant sales of second hand EVs will be key to us hitting our net-zero targets more efficiently.”

In anticipation of booming EV sales, charging companies have put billions toward infrastructure and want to see the government hold its ground, The Telegraph reported.

“It’s imperative that we keep this momentum going and this is why the ZEV mandate’s sales quotas are so important,” said Vicky Read, ChargeUK’s chief executive, as reported by The Telegraph. “They give charging investors the confidence to keep deploying ahead of demand.”

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