It's good to have a pit stop – a driver reviver – on any long trip up the coast. That's the case for whales, too, according to new research that shows they make lengthy krill stops on the annual 5000-kilometre migration from Antarctica to warmer waters and breeding grounds.

In the new paper published in Nature, marine scientist Dr Virginia Andrews-Goff said humpback whales were previously thought to have a “feast or famine” approach to migration: fasting when not occupying high-latitude feeding grounds.

Jem Cresswell wanted viewers to feel they were looking the whale in the eye so they would feel a connection to the animals he loves. Credit:Jem Cressell, Giants

When she tracked the movements of 30 humpback whales over three consecutive summers using satellite tags, which could isolate where the animals were searching for food, she discovered previously unknown feeding grounds that were critical habitat to their survival.

Dr Andrews-Goff, from the Australian Antarctic Division, discovered that the whales stopped to forage for as long as a month in either southern New Zealand, the east coast of Tasmania or Eden, NSW, for up to 35 days at a time.