The mighty humpback whale is one of the ocean’s true showstoppers — despite weighing up to 40 tonnes, they launch into the air in breathtaking breaches and sing complex songs that travel for kilometres underwater. Every year they take on one of the longest migrations in the animal kingdom, journeying up to 10,000 km between feeding and breeding grounds. Clever hunters too, they sometimes blow spirals of bubbles to trap fish in a “bubble-net feast.” Once hunted to the brink, humpbacks are now a conservation success story, their populations rebounding thanks to global protection. Yet they still face threats from entanglement, ship strikes, climate change, and noise pollution that disrupts their songs.