Bringing whale superhighways to life

In the Arctic, connectivity is not an abstract idea—it’s alive in the movement of whales. Gray whales and humpbacks travel thousands of kilometres between Arctic feeding grounds and distant tropical or temperate breeding areas, linking ecosystems that span entire ocean basins. Narwhals and bowhead whales move throughout the Arctic during the seasons. These vast migrations and movement areas contribute to ocean health far beyond the Arctic itself. Yet until recently, much of what scientists knew about these routes lived in static reports, scattered datasets and inaccessible archives.

That changed with the launch of BlueCorridors.org, a collaborative digital platform and community initiative built from 30 years of satellite tracking data. The platform brings whale movements across the globe into full view for the first time—along with the growing risks that whales face as climate change reshapes their migratory corridors. (In April, it won a 2026 Webby Award in the Best Data Visualization category.)

The Circle spoke with CHRIS JOHNSON, a marine conservation scientist and WWF’s global lead for the Protecting Whales and Dolphins Initiative, about how the tool came to be, what it reveals about ocean connectivity, and why it’s already influencing conservation strategies.

Where did the idea for Bluecorridors.org come from?

This has been a massive collaborative effort from the original idea to the present. In 2022, we co-produced the first report on whales and marine connectivity, Protecting Blue Corridors. It mapped, for the first time, global whale migration, growing risks and conservation opportunities on a region-by-region basis.

More than 50 research groups contributed about 30 years of data and more than 1,400 different satellite tracks. This led to work across WWF, including in the Arctic, exploring how we could implement its recommendations and practical conservation approaches.

Over the past couple of years, we realized the data needed to be available in a format that was more accessible than a static report or fixed maps. So we went back to the collaborators involved in the report and co-designed the concept with them. The question was, how could we take this approach and make the mapping available online?

We launched the Blue Corridors Initiative at the United Nations Ocean Conference in June 2025. This digital tool is part of that broader community-based initiative, which brings together scientists, community groups, nongovernmental organizations and governments in the Blue Corridors Initiative.

What can people learn from the tool right now?

When we launched the website, the first goal was to bring the data together and make the report content available online.

We are using it to share practical advice on growing risks, conservation opportunities and solutions related to whale conservation.

It also helps us communicate more effectively with policymakers about the risks whales face in different places and the actions we can take in response. It gives a better picture of what it means to conserve marine connectivity.

Anyone can go online and see the satellite tag data we have for various whale species. You can look at it on a static globe, or you can see an animation of all the data over one year, including how different whales move in different areas.

You can also overlay different threat layers: climate change, fisheries bycatch risk, shipping traffic. There are case studies from various regions, and the tool contains some of the narratives from the reports. You can see overlap for certain risks and what some of the solutions are.

Where do all the data come from?

They are mainly satellite tracking data. Over the past 30 years, researchers have been putting satellite tags on whales to see where they go. We can use photo identification of some species—for example, humpback whales, where a fluke photo is like a fingerprint. But satellite tracking lets us see their position over time, point to point, and that’s the data we have in the platform.

This is still very much the first version of the tool. The next step is to build it into a more interactive decision-support platform for conservation. We wanted to launch it, see how people responded, and then grow it from there.

We have already had requests for different types of data use, so we plan to release a downloadable dataset in late May for non-commercial use. We are also bringing on new partners and adding new data from other whale and dolphin species.

Why are whale migration routes such a powerful way to understand ocean connectivity and ocean health, especially in the Arctic?

Ocean connectivity is a very abstract concept to communicate. Usually, when we interact with whales, we see them in one place, but that place means different things to different species in different parts of the world.

The Arctic Ocean’s food-rich waters make it a key destination and feeding ground for baleen whales, like humpbacks, gray whales, blue whales and bowhead whales. Some whales, like bowheads, are endemic to the Arctic, but others visit the region only seasonally. Baleen whales move thousands of kilometres between their polar feeding grounds and tropical or temperate breeding grounds, and each species does it differently.

Satellite tracking shows us where they’re moving, where the migratory corridors are, and how climate change is affecting those movements.

Governments have provided positive feedback about the tool, especially in terms of visualizing whales’ movements across national and internation jurisdictions. It’s a powerful tool to communicate ocean connectivity.

This all started as a science communication project. Now we’re building on all of the efforts with our partners to co-design and implement strategies to better conserve and protect populations, some of which are still recovering from commercial whaling.

How do you see climate change reshaping these corridors?

Climate change is affecting the prey of baleen whales in the polar regions along with their migratory timings and cues. For example, with gray whales, we’re seeing impacts on the population in the northeastern Pacific. A theory is that climate change is impacting the availability of their prey in the Arctic, and in turn, their survival.

In recent years, large numbers of gray whales have stranded during their migration south from the Arctic to their breeding grounds in Mexico, primarily due to starvation. There are recent studies showing that some populations are shrinking in size.

To better understand the problem and advocate for a solution, we need to bring different knowledge sources together—satellite tracking, Indigenous Knowledge and local observations.

Right now, we can’t use the data to predict changes in movement and migration, but we’re exploring how AI could help develop a method for mapping future shifts in migratory corridors.

How do you hope different audiences will use this platform?

For WWF, we can only do this work in collaboration with the broader communities of experts. One study with 10 tracks is useful, but when you bring different knowledge and evidence together, you can look at trends, migratory corridors, and how to mitigate issues like shipping and growing fisheries bycatch.

For the public, the map is a powerful tool to show how species migrate across oceans and connect what’s happening from the polar regions to the temperate and tropical ones.

For governments, it’s simple to understand to help action management. When you watch an animation, dynamic and seasonal management makes sense.

We see visualizing blue corridors as an important way to communicate how the ocean works, show where future investment is needed to fill knowledge gaps, and inform the actions we need to take togethe