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For two centuries, the seas of the Cape Verde archipelago were a favorite whaling ground – known as the ‘San Antonio Ground’ among whalers – for an international fleet of whaling ships and especially for the "Yankee whalers" from New England, USA. One of their main targets was the humpback whale Megaptera novaeangliae, of which large numbers were caught (e.g. Clark 1887, Townsend 1935, Reeves et al. 2002, Smith & Reeves 2003, 2010).
Humpback whales Megaptera novaeangliae perform the longest known migrations among mammalian species (Stone et al. 1990, Rasmussen et al. 2007), feeding at high latitudes during the summer and undertaking annual journeys to their wintering breeding grounds in warm and shallow tropical waters (Winn & Reichley 1985, Clapham & Mead 1999). Due to breeding site fidelity and temporal separation at low latitudes, gene flow between Northern and Southern Hemisphere populations appears to be very limited (Rizzo & Schulte 2009). However, inter-oceanic exchange has recently been documented (Pomilla & Rosenbaum 2005, Stevick et al. 2010), demonstrating that philopatry may not be as strong as previously inferred (cf. Baker et al. 1993, 1994, Valsecchi et al. 1997).