PARIS, France — Two humpback whales have set new records for the longest-known distances travelled for their species by embarking on a journey of over 14,000 kilometres between Brazil and Australia, scientists said Wednesday. The international team of researchers were able to piece together the separate odysseys from photos of the whales’ tails — including some taken by amateur photographers on cruises — captured decades apart. These journeys through open water are “something that had never been documented before”, Cristina Castro, a marine biologist at the Pacific Whale Foundation in Ecuador, told AFP. “It’s not unheard of for an individual to occasionally stray (from a migratory route), but what we documented here goes far beyond that,” added the lead author of a new study in Royal Society Open Science. Every humpback has a pattern on the underside of their tail — or fluke — that is unique “like a human fingerprint”, Castro said. The scientists analyzed more than 19,000 photos taken between 1984 and 2005 in eastern Australia and Latin America using an image recognition algorithm. Then they sifted through each potential match to trace the two whales’ journey across the world. The first humpback was initially photographed in 2007 in Hervey Bay, in the state of Queensland on Australia’s east coast. It was spotted at the same place again in 2013. Its unique fluke next popped up six years later — this time off the coast of the Brazilian megacity Sao Paulo. As the crow flies, this is a distance of around 14,200 km (8,800 miles). Because the scientists only know the start and end points of the journey, it was impossible to determine the whale’s exact route -- or how far it actually travelled. The second whale made the opposite journey. First it was photographed off the coast