Male humpback whales produce one of the most complex vocalizations of any animal. Their intricate songs can last for hours. Each year, the males have a new song, and all male humpbacks in the Atlantic sing that same song, while all humpbacks in the Pacific sing another. It was recently discovered that the song is changed slightly as it is passed along from male to male.
Before human intervention, humpback whales could communicate through deep-ocean, low-frequency sound for thousands of miles. Their song, which research has revealed has a very similar structure to the sounds of land-living ungulates—elephants, moose, and even cattle—gave humpbacks global communication. In fact, most whales had vast ranges of communication until the early 1900s, when steamships, military and commercial ships, and seismic air-gun oil exploration filled the oceans with so much noise that the whales lost much of their ability to hear each other. The sounds of naval sonar cause injury and death to many whales.

Blue whales have been recorded migrating 3,100 miles, which is eclipsed by the gray whales’ migration from their nursery lagoons in Mexico to the Arctic every year, a roundtrip of more than 10,000 miles.