🐳 Whale Migration — Agent-Based Navigation

🐳 What It Demonstrates

This simulator models whale migration as an agent-based system. Each pod of whales navigates between polar feeding grounds (cold, nutrient-rich water) and tropical breeding grounds (warm, calm water) following seasonal cues. Agents steer using a simplified magnetic field compass, maintain cohesion within pods, and avoid shipping noise corridors. The simulation shows how anthropogenic noise can disrupt migration routes, forcing whales into sub-optimal paths and increasing energy expenditure.

How to Use

• Adjust Pod Count and Whales per Pod to populate the ocean.
• Migration Speed controls how fast the seasonal cycle progresses.
• Increase Shipping Noise to see whales deflecting around busy corridors.
• Toggle Shipping lanes to visualise the noise corridors, Feeding/breeding zones for the polar/tropical targets.
• Migration trails show the paths each pod has taken during the year.

Did You Know?

Humpback whales migrate up to 8 000 km each way — one of the longest of any mammal. Grey whales hold the record at ~20 000 km round trip. Whales navigate using Earth's magnetic field, the angle of sunlight, and even the pattern of ocean swells. Shipping noise has doubled every decade since the 1960s and can travel hundreds of kilometres underwater, masking whale communication calls and disrupting feeding behaviour. Some populations have shifted their routes by 100+ km to avoid noisy shipping lanes.