Marine researchers documenting a rare humpback whale birth off the coast of New South Wales, Australia, captured footage showing a newborn calf emerging to take its first breath. The July 28, 2026, sighting highlights ongoing scientific efforts to track reproduction, while broader studies reveal complex social behaviors like coordinated nighttime hunting and interspecies rescues.
Scientists and wildlife observers have documented extraordinary behaviors among humpback whales, ranging from cooperative nocturnal foraging to rare instances of interspecies rescue. In one notable 2009 sighting in Antarctica, a pair of humpbacks intervened when a pod of killer whales chased a Weddell seal onto an ice floe. According to a 2017 review paper published in Marine Mammal Science under the title Humpback whales interfering when mammal-eating killer whales attack other species: Mobbing behavior and interspecific altruism?
by Dr Robert Pitman of NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center, with Volker Deecke, Christine Gabriele and eleven other co-authors from research institutions around the world, researchers compiled 115 documented interactions between humpback whales and killer whales across a sixty-two-year period from 1951 to 2012. The interactions came from researchers, whale-watch operators and wildlife photographers across multiple ocean basins.
Documented Interspecies Interventions and Orca Encounters
Rare Drone Footage Captures New South Wales Birth
Adding to the growing body of observational data, wildlife photographer Alexander Forrest captured what is believed to be the fourth complete humpback whale birth ever recorded on film and the first-ever captured by drone. Filmed off the coast of New South Wales, Australia, on Tuesday, the video shows the water fill with blood before the newborn calf emerges to take its first breath. The nonprofit Organisation for the Rescue and Research of Cetaceans in Australia, or ORRCA, said on social media that wildlife photographer Alexander Forrest was capturing images of whales during a northbound migration when he noticed an adult female displaying unusual behaviour.
In a post on Instagram, Forrest said that while the ocean seemed like it was full of activity,
this whale was traveling at a very slow speed. I was naïve in the rarity I was about to document,
he wrote. The whale suddenly rose toward the surface, so I hit record – any breath is chance to capture a unique behavior. In this instance she didn't rise for an exhale, but to birth her new calf.
Forrest said the moment was “extraordinary.” It's a privilege to have witnessed such a remarkable moment, and even more rewarding to know it may contribute to marine mammal science for years to come,
Forrest said. Watching this unfold in front of me, I wasn't just a filmmaker or a photographer. I was a spectator.
Forrest was joined by members of ORRCA’s team, who continued to monitor the mother and calf over several hours, collecting observations during the critical first hours of the calf's life,
the organization said on social media. Filmed by Brett Tucker in Byron Bay, New South Wales, breathtaking footage also captures an unforgettable encounter with two majestic humpback whales both beneath the surface and above the waves, featuring tail slaps sending towering plumes of spray into the air.
Cooperative Benthic Hunting Strategies in the Gulf of Maine
Beyond defensive rescues and calving documentation, humpback whales have also been observed performing all sorts of feeding behaviors. One of their most impressive involves up to 33 whales swimming in a circular formation while breathing out to produce a bubble net that traps schooling fish, which are then gulped up near the surface. Stunning drone footage captures three humpback whales creating a perfect bubble-net feeding circle off the coast of Montauk, New York, captured in stunning aerial footage by photographer Michael Cuomo. Meanwhile, while studying a group of humpbacks living in the Gulf of Maine off the coast of Massachusetts, researchers noticed the whales making a distinctive “double-pulse” call while swimming along the bottom at night and in low-light conditions. Curiosity piqued, they wondered if this indicated that the animals were coordinating their behavior. To solve the mystery, the team used tags to record the whales’ movement, audio, and even video. What they found blew them away. In a scene not dissimilar to the velociraptors of Jurassic Park, one whale will swim along the sandy bottom, disturbing sand lance fish that are buried in the sediment. In the meantime, two other whales will swim in out of the gloom at 11 o’clock and 1 o’clock angles, opening their mouths and rolling onto their side in unison when within just a few meters of the first whale and gobbling up the fleeing fish. Scientists think that this behavior is fully coordinated and therefore helps to shed light on the intelligence of these whales. “The goal of the present work was to investigate the level of cooperative hunting in benthic-feeding humpback whales and present evidence that the behavior is coordinated and satisfies many characteristics of collaboration, the most cognitively complex level of cooperative hunting,” the authors write. Out of 110 benthic hunting events, meaning the whales were feeding along the seafloor, 79 percent involved the whales working together, either in a group of three or four.
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