Humpback Whales in Bermuda

Every spring, thousands of humpback whales pass Bermuda on their journey north from their breeding grounds in the Caribbean to their summer feeding grounds off New England, Canada, Greenland, Iceland and Norway. Bermuda sits right on their path. The whales don't feed here; instead they congregate around underwater seamounts such as Challenger Bank to rest, nurse their calves, sing, and show off their social and breaching behaviour. The best months to see them are March and April.

The "big-winged New Englander"

The humpback's Latin name is Megaptera novaeangliae, meaning "big-winged New Englander". Megaptera ("big wing") refers to its enormous white flippers, up to a third of its body length, the longest of any whale; novaeangliae ("of New England") because the species was first described from whales seen off the New England coast. Adults grow to around 15 metres (50 feet) and can weigh 30 tonnes or more.

Bermuda and the songs of the humpback whale

Bermuda has a special place in the story of whale song. In the 1950s Frank Watlington, a Bermudian engineer working for the US Navy at a listening station at St. David's, was using underwater microphones (hydrophones) to listen for Soviet submarines. Every spring he heard strange, haunting sounds, and he was the first to link them to the humpback whales passing Bermuda, confirming it on rare occasions when he saw their white flippers as they breached.

He kept his tapes and later shared them with the scientists Roger and Katy Payne, who came to Bermuda in the 1960s. They discovered that the sounds were complex, repeating songs. Frank Watlington's recordings appear on the 1970 album Songs of the Humpback Whale, which became a best-seller, helped launch the "Save the Whales" movement and the end of commercial whaling, and was added to the US Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2010.

In January 1979, National Geographic magazine went further, slipping a small record of humpback whale songs – Frank Watlington's recordings, with commentary by Roger Payne – into every copy of the magazine. With 10.5 million copies, it was the largest single pressing of any record at the time, and it carried the whales' voices into homes around the world.

Andrew Stevenson and Whales Bermuda

For more than twenty years, Bermuda-based researcher and film-maker Andrew Stevenson has photographed and filmed the humpbacks passing Bermuda. Each whale can be identified by the black and white pattern on the underside of its tail (its fluke), which is as unique as a fingerprint, and his Bermuda Humpback Whale Catalogue now identifies nearly 2,500 individual whales. Find out more at Whales Bermuda.

His award-winning documentaries include:

  • Where the Whales Sing (2010) – Best Underwater Filmmaker at the BLUE Ocean Film Festival and the Masterworks Charman Prize.
  • The Secret Lives of the Humpbacks (2019) – Best Oceans Film at the Wildlife Conservation Film Festival in New York, and an Audience Choice Award in France.
  • If They Were Us: The Humpback Whales of the Sargasso Sea (2026) – first place for Marine Ecosystems at the 2026 Wildlife Conservation Film Festival.

In 2026 he also received the Bermuda National Trust's Bermudiana Award for Natural Heritage Impact.

Whale watching tours

Tours run from early March to late April; sightings are common but never guaranteed, and trips depend on the weather. Book early.

You can sometimes see whales blowing and breaching from the South Shore cliffs too – bring binoculars.

Watching whales responsibly

Humpbacks are protected in Bermuda under the Protected Species Act 2003, and it is an offence to disturb or harass them. If you are out in a boat, please follow the Government's whale watching guidelines:

  • Stay at least 100 metres from whales (50 metres from dolphins).
  • Within 300 metres, slow down to no more than 7 knots and avoid sudden changes of speed or direction.
  • Approach from the side and travel parallel to the whales, never head-on or from behind, and never chase a whale that moves away.
  • Do not swim with the whales.
  • If the whales change direction, dive suddenly or seem disturbed, move away slowly.

Bermuda's whaling history

Bermuda's whaling was small-scale. Shore whaling began in 1616–17, and for over three hundred years men rowed out in small boats to catch humpbacks as they passed in spring, towing them ashore at places such as Whale Bay in Southampton. Catches were never more than a few tens of whales a year, and the industry never made much money. The last humpbacks were taken in the early 1940s. Today the whales that were once hunted here are one of Bermuda's great natural wonders.

The journey south

In late autumn and winter the whales make the return trip, leaving their feeding grounds to head back to the warm Caribbean waters where they mate and give birth. Their whole route, from the West Indies to the Barents Sea, was recognised in 2025 as the North Atlantic Humpback Whale Migratory Corridor, an Important Marine Mammal Area (IMMA), and Bermuda and its seamounts have their own: the Somers Isles and Adjacent Seamounts IMMA.

The southbound whales are seen far less often than in spring: they pass in winter, when the seas are rough and few boats are out, and many travel well offshore. But they are here. Underwater microphones placed on Challenger Bank and the Bermuda platform in 2018–19, in a study co-authored by Andrew Stevenson, picked up humpbacks singing – often several at once – from late December onwards, showing that Bermuda is a resting place on the journey south as well as north.

📚 Sources & further reading – the research and articles behind this page.