Virginia’s humpback whale records cluster where the Chesapeake Bay meets the open Atlantic and along the ocean side of Virginia’s Eastern Shore, the same corridor migrating whales use as they move between winter grounds farther south and summer feeding grounds off New England and Canada.
Humpbacks passing Virginia are mostly feeding, lunging through schools of herring, capelin, and other baitfish that concentrate near the bay mouth and the barrier islands. Some of the whales seen here are young animals that haven’t yet made a full migration south, spending a winter working the mid-Atlantic coast instead.
Records run year-round but peak in January and February, when more whales pass close enough to shore, or close enough to shipping lanes and whale-watch trips, to be logged. All of Virginia’s occurrence records come from GBIF rather than iNaturalist, which fits an animal that’s almost never seen from land.
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