Humpback Whales are often found in coastal or shelf waters, although offshore distribution is also common (Clapham 2018). In the Eastern North Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea, they have regularly been observed at various distances from shore, sometimes very close to it (Frantzis et al. 2004, Genov et al. 2009, Ryan et al. 2016b, Aniceto et al. 2018, Kettemer et al. 2022a).
The Humpback Whale has a diverse diet, feeding on euphausiids and various species of small schooling fish such as herring (Clupea spp.), capelin (Mallotus villosus), sand eel/lance (Ammodytes spp.), and mackerel (Scomber scombrus, Clapham 2018). Diet may vary by season and feeding ground, depending on prey availability. The species exhibits great flexibility and variation in its feeding behaviour (Weinrich et al. 1992, Simon et al. 2012, Allen et al. 2013), including exploiting fishery operations (Basran and Rasmussen 2021, Iwata et al. 2022) and anthropogenic-based food sources such as salmon hatcheries (Chenoweth et al. 2017), and appears to be unique among large whales in its production and use of so-called bubble nets to catch schooling fish (Wiley et al. 2011, Marwood et al. 2022). Off Greenland and Iceland, euphausiids, capelin and sand eels appear to be the dominant part of the diet (Heide-Jørgensen and Laidre 2007, Heide-Jorgensen et al. 2007, Magnúsdóttir et al. 2014). In the Celtic Sea, Humpback Whales were found to eat herring (Clupea harengus), sprat (Sprattus sprattus), and krill (Meganyctiphanes norvegica and Nyctiphanes couchii), although piscivorous diet dominated (Ryan et al. 2014a). In 2009, a male Humpback Whale spent 2 months in the shallow (~20 m) waters of Slovenia, northern Adriatic Sea (an unusual location for this species), presumably feeding on round sardinella (Sardinella aurita), which is not common in that area but was present in large numbers during the time (Genov et al. 2009). Humpback Whales appear to track the movements of their prey and may change their distribution in response to changes in the abundance and distribution of prey species, or their physiological needs (Kettemer et al. 2022a).

In Norway, Humpback Whales and Killer Whales (Orcinus orca) often feed on the same prey patches of herring (Jourdain and Vongraven 2017) and in some contexts Killer Whale sounds were shown to attract Humpback Whales through what appeared to be a ‘dinner-bell’ effect (Benti et al. 2021).

The Humpback Whale is a cosmopolitan species found in all the major ocean basins (Clapham 2018), and all but one subpopulation (that of the Arabian Sea; Pomilla et al. 2014) migrate between mating and calving grounds in tropical waters, usually near continental coastlines or island groups, and productive colder waters in temperate and high latitudes. However, not all whales undertake seasonal migrations to breeding area (Brown et al. 1995).

In the North Atlantic, Humpback Whales are distributed from tropical waters all the way to the Arctic pack ice (Smith et al. 1999). They travel to feeding grounds in the Gulf of Maine, Gulf of St Lawrence, Newfoundland, Labrador, Greenland, Iceland, and Norway in spring, with strong site fidelity to these areas (Clapham 2018). Genetic analyses suggest that at least for Iceland and Norway, this fidelity is maintained on an evolutionary timescale (Palsbøll et al. 1995, Holm Larsen et al. 1996), but same whales may also utilize different foraging grounds within the same annual cycle (Kettemer et al. 2022b). Whales from all feeding grounds migrate to a common breeding area in the West Indies, where they mate and calve (Stevick et al. 2006, Kennedy et al. 2014, Kettemer et al. 2022b). Some whales from the Icelandic and Norwegian feeding grounds migrate to the Cape Verde Islands in the North Atlantic, off West Africa, which represents a breeding ground for a small population of whales (Jann et al. 2003, Wenzel et al. 2009, Ryan et al. 2014b, Wenzel et al. 2020). A small group of Humpback Whales has been found to use Irish waters as a year-round feeding ground (Ryan et al. 2016b), some of which have been re-sighted in the waters of Cape Verde Islands (Berrow et al. 2021).

Humpback Whales are relatively rare in the Mediterranean Sea, but the number of records has been increasing over the recent decade (Frantzis et al. 2004, Genov et al. 2009, Espada Ruíz et al. 2018), with some photographic matches with West Indies (Violi et al. 2021).

Existing conservation actions
Humpback Whales have been nominally protected from commercial whaling in the North Atlantic by the International Whaling Commission since 1955. The Humpback Whale in Europe is protected under a number of treaties, including the EU Habitats Directive (Annex IV), ACCOBAMS, CITES Appendix I and II, CMS Appendix I.

Conservation actions needed to mitigate major threats
Despite the Least Concern status, it is important to monitor abundance and extent of any mortality from anthropogenic activities, such as fisheries.