Humpback whale researcher Andrew Stevenson has celebrated another first after one of the gentle giants photographed in Bermuda waters got confirmed as the same whale sighted off the coast of Ireland.

Individual humpback whales can be identified by the pattern on their flukes — the double lobes of the animal’s tails.

Known as “Hookie”, the male humpback was spotted in Ireland in January and February 2010.

Mr Stevenson said that the same humpback was photographed later in Bermuda by WhalesBermuda, a programme established in 2007 to research these whales migrating by Bermuda.

The team tracks and documents humpback activity using underwater and video footage as well as underwater hydrophone recordings.

WhalesBermuda crew member Camilla Stringer photographed the humpback’s distinctive flukes in Bermuda in January 2015 as the animal migrated past Bermuda on his way south to the Caribbean.

Analysis of the signature pattern has now revealed that the Bermuda whale, No 1450, was the same animal as the Ireland sighting of Hookie.

Mr Stevenson said: “This is not only the first match of a Bermuda whale to Ireland, but also the first match between North America and the British Isles.

“It is thought that the Irish and British Isles humpback whales migrate to Cabo Verde in the Eastern North Atlantic.

“But Hookie shows us that the more we know, the more we don't know.”

The same whale was also sighted in June and July 2013 off the French territory islands of St Pierre et Miquelon, just off Newfoundland, Canada.

Hookie has additionally visited Trinity in Newfoundland “numerous times in 2018 and 2021”, Mr Stevenson said.

He thanked Padraig Whooley, of the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group, as well as the touring company Sea of Whales Adventures based in Newfoundland.

Mr Stevenson credited Roger Etcheberry and Joel Detcheverry in St Pierre et Miquelon, along with Ms Stringer for the original Bermuda identification of Hookie.

Spring in Bermuda will come with more sightings of humpbacks, as they head back from their breeding grounds in the Caribbean to their feeding grounds up north, including the Bermuda seamount.