Overview
Status: Ongoing
Topics: Conservation, Research
Start date: 01/08/2022
End date:
Parent project: Telemetry Lab
Project website:
Funding institutions: WWF Protecting Whales & Dolphins Initiative
SPA/RAC
Autonomous
Target species: Fin whale
Tethys role: Co-Leader
Project leader: Tethys Research Institute co-leader with Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV)
Project manager for Tethys: Simone Panigada
Project partners:
Project subcontractors:
Project staff: Viola Panigada
Project other staff:
Milestone project:
Detailed description
Since 2021, a recurring June-July movement of fin whales through the Dénia area (southern Spain) has been observed, as the animals exit the Mediterranean towards the Atlantic Ocean. To better understand these outward movements, satellite tags were deployed on four individuals, all of which subsequently left the Mediterranean and reached productive feeding grounds in the North Atlantic.
Every spring and summer, large numbers of fin whales visit the north-western Mediterranean Sea, foraging in the Corso-Ligurian-Provençal Basin and the Balearic Sea before departing towards unknown foraging or breeding grounds. In recent years, a growing number of these whales are observed crossing the Strait of Gibraltar to reach and exploit feeding areas in the North Atlantic. However, mid- and long-range movement patterns within the Mediterranean and adjacent Atlantic waters remain poorly understood and are likely to be highly dynamic, influenced by changes in prey availability.
Since 2021, land-based observations have been carried out by collaborators from the Universitat Politècnica de València, with the aim of photo-identifying and tracking southbound whales off Cape San Antonio and Cape Nao (Alicante, eastern Spain) during the summer months.
Results
In the early summer of 2022-2023, satellite transmitters were deployed on four fin whales in the Dénia area. All individuals moved south, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, and travelled towards the Bay of Biscay to forage. These results -- including the long-term tracking of one individual (“Cesare”) from the Ligurian Sea for over 100 days -- provide the first clear evidence of the Bay of Biscay serving as a summer feeding area for Mediterranean fin whales.
Additional data collected in 2025 have complemented these findings, bringing the total number of fin whales tracked exiting the Mediterranean to seven. When combined with visual observations, this conservative tagging effort is sufficient to document a novel migration pathway out of the Basin. Current research questions now focus on understanding why some fin whales leave the Mediterranean and which areas of the North Atlantic they ultimately exploit. The limited and variable tracks suggest that these destinations differ among years, and existing data do not yet clarify the ecological drivers of this behavior.
Future fieldwork will aim to address these questions, expanding data collection to the offshore waters of Portugal and the Bay of Biscay -- feeding areas repeatedly visited by tracked fin whales in recent years.