This species is rarely recorded in UAE waters. It has occasionally been recorded off the East Coast (Baldwin 1995). An examination of whales reported in the Gulf since 1883 confirmed eight records of Humpback Whales, including Holocene remains of one specimen from Abu Dhabi, but none of the other seven records was from UAE (Dakteh et al. 2017). Four of the records were from Iran. Two strandings and one sighting of a mother-calf pair also have been recorded for the Gulf of Oman coast of Iran (Braulik et al. 2010, Owfi et al. 2015). A number of sightings have also been recently reported off the coast of Pakistan (Moazzam and Nawaz 2017). The last known sighting on the east coast was in 1979 at Khor Fakkan though this species is likely to travel past this shoreline from time to time. On 9 October 2017, a number of sightings and video recording of a mother Humpback and calf off the coast of Dubai were reported to the UAE Dolphin Project (<a href=""http://www.uaedolphinproject.org"">www.uaedolphinproject.org</a>), the first recent record of live Humpback Whales in the Gulf. These sightings support the hypothesis (Dakteh et al. 2017) that the Gulf may be part of the natural home range of the Arabian Sea Humpback subpopulation and reconfirm the importance of regional collaboration on conservation efforts. It is also one of the very few occasions that a mother and a calf of this species have been observed in the region in the past 20 years. The Arabian Sea Humpback Whale (ASHW) subpopulation is the only one known in the region. There are a number of records for the northwest Gulf of Oman near the entrance of the Strait of Hormuz (Baldwin et al. 1999, Minton et al. 2011, Pomilla et al. 2014) and it is a reasonable assumption that a this is a single stock with continuous distribution into the Gulf (Dakteh et al. 2017). Whaling data and recent scientific research confirm that the ASHW subpopulation is small and isolated (Minton et al. 2011). The known distribution includes the waters of the UAE, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, Iran, Pakistan and India with potential for occurrence in other states of the North Indian Ocean region, but so far almost all data comes from Oman (Mikhalev 2000, Baldwin 2000, Minton et al. 2011). Research completed over the past two decades in Oman provides compelling evidence that the ASHW population is the world's most isolated and genetically distinct population of humpback whales, separated from conspecifics for an estimated 70,000 years (Pomilla et al. 2014). It is also the smallest and most endangered subpopulation of this species. The available scientific data clearly indicate that ASHWs remain within the Northern Indian Ocean year-round and are isolated from Southern Indian Ocean populations (Minton et al. 2011, Pomilla et al. 2014). However, their movements within the Arabian Sea remain poorly understood, due to a lack of dedicated research effort in any range state other than Oman. Humpback Whales in all other populations migrate between distinct feeding and breeding grounds that are typically separated by thousands of kilometres, and it is reasonable to assume that ASHWs engage in at least some level of transboundary movement between the waters of the range states where they have been documented to occur. This is supported by a recent record in 2017 of a female whale recorded with satellite telemetry crossing from Oman to India, and back. The tracked whale, after spending a few weeks engaged in small-scale movements in the Gulf of Masirah (Oman), then suddenly headed across the Arabian Sea to a location just off the coast of Goa, India reaching later the southernmost tip of India, before returning to Oman. There are two records of this species northwest of the UAE in the Arabian Gulf. It is still reported in the Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, but nearshore development and fishing pressure may have reduced its former range here (Baldwin 2005) and it is more often recorded in the Arabian Sea though even here it is rare. Globally, the Humpback Whale is found in all the major ocean basins. All subpopulations except the one in the Arabian Sea 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 (Reilly et al. 2008b).