World’s Oldest Humpback Whale, ‘Old Timer,’ Spotted in Alaska
Old Timer, a male humpback whale first photographed in 1972, was recently spotted in Alaska, making it the oldest known humpback whale in the world.
Humpback whales are identifiable by the unique patterns on their tails, much like fingerprints in humans. The distinctive ridges and markings on each whale’s tail fluke allow researchers to track individual whales over time. When Adam A. Pack, a marine mammal researcher at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, photographed whales in Alaska’s Frederick Sound this July, he immediately recognized the familiar tail of an old friend. The mostly black tail with speckled white edges belonged to Old Timer. First observed in 1972, Old Timer is now at least 53 years old, according to Pack, co-founder and president of The Dolphin Institute.
Once severely depleted by commercial whaling, the humpback whale population has been recovering over the past few decades. However, these majestic creatures still face significant threats from ship strikes, entanglement in fishing gear, and climate change. Pack is particularly concerned for Old Timer’s safety.
The last time Pack saw Old Timer was in 2015, during an unprecedented year-long marine heatwave that led to mass die-offs of seabirds and marine mammals, including humpback whales. But nine years later, Pack was relieved to see Old Timer had survived.
Tracking the movements of whales is notoriously difficult, with researchers relying on comparing recent photos of tail flukes to historical images. But future research on Old Timer and other humpback whales of various ages could be greatly enhanced by artificial intelligence. Pack hopes this technology will help uncover how some whales manage to withstand harsh environmental conditions.
Humpback whales inhabit various populations across the North Pacific. Old Timer is part of a group that spends winters breeding in the waters around Hawaii and summers feeding in southeast Alaska, gorging on small fish and krill. Humpback whales have been the subject of a long-term scientific study that began in 1976 when marine mammal researcher Louis Herman started photographing the whales and their distinctive tail flukes.
Herman conducted annual surveys, amassing a massive collection of tail images, allowing scientists to track individual whales throughout their lives. The collection, which now includes more than 30,000 photos, offers unprecedented insights into whale life, from migration patterns to social behavior. “This is one of the longest-running humpback whale studies in the world,” said Pack, a former student of Herman and now the project’s leader.
The research is now entering a new phase, utilizing machine learning with the support of an online platform called Happywhale, which collects whale tail photos from scientists and the public worldwide. Happywhale’s database currently holds about 1.1 million photos of more than 100,000 humpback whales, according to Ted Cheeseman, co-founder of Happywhale and a Ph.D. student at Southern Cross University in Australia. The platform’s AI-powered algorithms automatically identify individual whales in photos, aiding scientists in tracking the whales’ appearances over time.
Earlier this year, Cheeseman, Pack, and dozens of other researchers used Happywhale’s image recognition tools to estimate the abundance of humpback whales in the North Pacific from 2002 to 2021. Initially, the population boomed, reaching around 33,500 by 2012. However, a sharp decline followed, coinciding with the severe marine heatwave during which Pack last saw Old Timer. The heatwave, which lasted from 2014 to 2016, reduced the availability of fish and krill. The humpback population in Hawaii was particularly hard hit, declining by 34% between 2013 and 2021.
Pack hopes that with the help of Happywhale, he can uncover why Old Timer survived while many others did not under changing environmental conditions. “It’s possible that Old Timer has lived long enough to adapt to periods of scarce food resources. How many other whales like Old Timer have the resilience to withstand such environmental challenges?” Pack wonders.
