Whales tagged and tracked off Australia's south coast are travelling thousands of kilometres, a new study has revealed.
Scientists tagged five southern right whales off WA's southern coastline last September before they headed south in a bid to find out more about where they were foraging for food.
The tracking maps showed the whales went south and south-west to waters off Antarctica.
One whale tagged near Augusta was tracked to waters south of Madagascar.
Insight into migration
It's among the longest tracking done on the endangered Australian southern right whales.
Adjunct research fellow at the University of Western Australia Kate Sprogis said the results of the tracking had revealed where the whales were feeding in the Southern Ocean.
"All this information that we're getting, we didn't know beforehand," she said.
"We're getting some really great information now on the tracks of the whales."
Dr Sprogis said observing the whales' travel paths had confirmed some predictions.
"Two of the whales have actually already made it to Antarctica, which is what my colleague Emma Carroll predicted," she said.
"I was predicting that the whales would go west in the Indian Ocean, and two of the whales actually have gone west.
It's been mind blowing, watching how far they're actually travelling."
Whales tracked
The project was first launched in Aotearoa New Zealand three years ago, where researchers focused on southern right whales that migrated off the coast of Auckland Islands.
Dr Sprogis, who works in collaboration with Associate Professor scientist Emma Carroll and Professor Rob Harcourt from Macquarie University, said data collected from the NZ project showed those whales travelled south of the Great Australian Bight to feed.
Dr Sprogis said the data being collected was surprising.
She said one of the New Zealand whales reached Esperance last September and travelled along the south coast towards Bremer Bay.
"We had no idea that happened, that during the breeding season a New Zealand whale would be in the shallow waters of our coast," she said.
Dr Sprogis said previous data on where the whales went to feed over the summer dated back to whaling records.
Understanding whales
Dr Sprogis said it was too early to analyse the data just yet.
"Once we get the whole migration path from each of the individuals, then we can really look into the nuts and bolts of how far they've travelled," she said.
"The depths that they've been travelling, the water temperatures that they've been travelling in, and any crossover with any other members of the same population, or with the New Zealand population, or the South African population."
Saving a species
Dr Sprogis said the research would be important for the conservation of the endangered species.
"We should learn more about this in terms of climate change and future oceanic changes, like global warming," she said.
Dr Sprogis said the whales had travelled significant kilometres with some reaching the Crozet Islands and Kerguelen Islands which are sub-Antarctic French Islands.
