Every year beginning in October, thousands of humpback whales start to leave their warm nurseries in the Eastern Tropical Pacific—an ocean stretch spanning the west coast of Mexico to the northern tip of Peru—to embark on a remarkable and hazardous journey of more than 5,000 miles to feed in Antarctica.

As they travel to the Southern Ocean they must navigate a gauntlet of obstacles, from busy shipping lanes to lost or abandoned fishing gear called “ghost nets” that drift in the abyss, posing a constant risk of entanglement. Against these odds, the whales continue to chart their course, relying on instinct and memory, the Earth’s magnetic field, ocean currents, underwater mountain ranges and other topography to reach their final destination.

Until recently, these migrations have remained

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