Whales Don’t Ask for Directions: Here’s How They Always Know the Way

The open ocean does not come with road signs. No friendly dolphins waving you in the right direction. Definitely no Google Maps. Yet, year after year, whales migrate across entire ocean basins with uncanny accuracy. What is their secret… and can they teach us the way?

Scientists are still piecing together the full picture, but what follows are the leading theories about how whales pull off these jaw-dropping journeys.

A whale’s travel itinerary

You may know that most baleen whales embark on long-distance migrations between polar feeding grounds and tropical breeding areas. Cold, nutrient-rich waters at high latitudes are the unromantic food court, while the warm, calmer tropics double as a dating hub and a comfortable nursery.

Miraculously, many individuals return to the very same spot where they were born when they are ready to start breeding. Imagine you only took one long road trip as a baby and then, five to ten years later, retraced it perfectly – without a map, in the opposite direction, and without snacks for the road (gasp). That’s what whales do.

In fact, data shows that many whales hold a constant course with directional accuracy better than 5°, and in some cases even within 1°, over distances of 200 to over 2,000 kilometers. This is not just a quirk — in several cases, more than half of a whale’s entire migration track followed a consistent, straight trajectory.

The internal compass

One of the most compelling ideas is that whales can sense the Earth’s magnetic field. Some brain cells may contain magnetite — a mineral sensitive to geomagnetic lines. Supporting evidence includes:

• Strandings may occur in areas where the magnetic field is distorted.
• Increased strandings during solar storms, which disrupt the magnetic field.
• Behavioral changes in other migratory animals that align with magnetic shifts.

However, the picture is more nuanced. Even when whales depart from regions with nearly identical magnetic inclinations or declinations, they often take very different headings. Conversely, whales experiencing widely different magnetic environments can still swim in parallel directions.

Space-travel

Birds use celestial cues to navigate, while dung beetles orient themselves using the light intensity from the Milky Way. Some scientists even suggested that seals could steer using the stars (although the experiment was performed in a captive setting by projecting the night sky on the ceiling). Could whales be stargazers, too? While no one has caught a whale using a telescope yet, one could think that they use the sun by day and the stars by night to help steer.

However, a long-term tracking study on humpback whale migrations revealed that whales maintained precise headings even when the Sun’s angle (both in azimuth and altitude) varied by up to 26° along their routes. Similarly, individuals experiencing nearly identical Sun positions took completely different paths. Interestingly, whales exposed to nearly identical sun positions sometimes took completely different paths. This suggests that while the Sun may help with orientation, it is likely not the primary navigational cue.

As for the stars, whether whales can actually see and use them for navigation remains uncertain and has been debated for years. There’s no conclusive evidence that they can perceive stars enough to use them as guides. Therefore, it is likely that whales rely on a combination of other cues to stay on course during migration.

A multi-sensory experience

On a vacation in the Big Blue, there’s not a lot of sightseeing going on. Landmarks are few and far between, and visibility is limited anyway. But whales make the most of what Mother Nature has given them:

• Salinity levels and temperature: Changes in salt concentration and water temperature may indicate proximity to certain regions or currents.
• Seafloor features: Underwater ridges and valleys may act as invisible road signs.
• Currents: Like catching a tailwind, ocean currents fast-track whales along reliable routes.  
• Scents: With their large olfactory bulb, whales might be able to partially rely on smells to orient themselves.

Travel companions can help inexperienced whales

Travel is often better with friends, and some whales might agree. Inexperienced individuals could learn migration routes by tagging along with well-travelled whales. Additionally, there is strength in numbers; you are less likely to get attacked by predators when you have a few thousand tons worth of bodyguards with you.

Follow the music

Few things are more irritating than being trapped on a long bus ride next to someone blasting music from their phone speaker. Life in the ocean is a bit like that, except the loud ones are humpback whales, their songs can be heard from hundreds of kilometers away, and noise-cancelling headphones have not quite reached the marine market.

Nevertheless, the inescapable underwater concerts have some advantages. Besides attracting mates, the songs could guide traveling individuals in the right direction. Different humpback populations each sing their own regional songs, so when a whale hears a familiar tune, they know they are swimming into the right neighbourhood.

Lost at sea

Despite their remarkable navigational toolkit, whales can still go off course. The ocean is no longer the stable environment it once was, and many of the cues whales rely on are shifting or vanishing altogether.

Unfortunately, human activity introduces turbulence. Warming waters alter salinity and temperature gradients, making them harder to read. Underwater noise from shipping, drilling, and sonar can drown out the long-distance songs that some whales may use to stay oriented. In heavily trafficked areas, acoustic smog is so intense it can mask even the loudest humpback ballads.

Physical obstacles also take a toll. Expanding shipping lanes, offshore infrastructure, and habitat loss can fragment once-familiar migratory routes. Imagine returning to your childhood neighborhood only to find highways where footpaths used to be — disorientation is inevitable.

And yet, against these odds, most whales still make it. Their resilience is as astounding as their memory. Using tools we barely understand — ancient instincts, sensory abilities still under study, and perhaps even cultural knowledge passed between generations — they continue to navigate an increasingly noisy, unstable world.

If navigation is an art, whales remain the ocean’s undisputed masters. And maybe, just maybe, they have a thing or two to teach us about finding our way through uncertainty.

Sources and further readings

• Costa, Daniel P., et al. “Assessing the exposure of animals to acoustic disturbance: towards an understanding of the population consequences of disturbance.” Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics. Vol. 27. No. 1. AIP Publishing, 2016.
• Granger, Jesse, et al. “Gray whales strand more often on days with increased levels of atmospheric radio-frequency noise.” Current Biology 30.4 (2020): R155-R156.
• Horton, Travis W., et al. “Straight as an arrow: humpback whales swim constant course tracks during long-distance migration.” Biology letters 7.5 (2011): 674-679.
• Johnston, Stuart T., and Kevin J. Painter. “Avoidance, confusion or solitude? Modelling how noise pollution affects whale migration.” Movement Ecology 12.1 (2024): 17.
• Kirschvink, Joseph L., Andrew E. Dizon, and James A. Westphal. “Evidence from strandings for geomagnetic sensitivity in cetaceans.” Journal of Experimental Biology 120.1 (1986): 1-24.

Did you enjoy reading about whale navigation? Check out our other posts on whale migrations here:

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