A wandering male was among a group of humpback whales photographed from a research vessel off the Pacific coast of Colombia in 2013.
It was then identified in a similar area in 2017 – and off Zanzibar in 2022.
The sightings are separated by a great-circle distance of 13,046 km – the minimum distance for the route the whale could have taken, scientists say, although it is likely much greater.
Since the Earth is a sphere, the shortest path between two points is expressed as the great circle distance corresponding to the arc connecting the two points on the sphere.
The paper’s findings are based on hundreds of thousands of whale photos submitted by researchers, whale watchers and members of the public to the citizen science website happywhale.com.
The database uses artificial intelligence to match the individual shapes and patterns of the tails of humpback whales or flukes, thus mapping their movements around the world.
The study is published in the journal Royal Society for Open Science, external.
Learn more about humpback whales at The secret of the giants of Antarctica on BBC iPlayer.
