Two dead humpback whales are seen off the coast of New York
Two dead humpback whales have been spotted in waters not far from New York City, federal authorities said Thursday, in another worrying sign for a species facing a number of threats.
The sightings were reported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Marine Mammal Stranding Center, a New Jersey nonprofit that helps whales and other animals in need. Neither group immediately responded to requests for comment overnight.
One dead whale was seen in Raritan Bay, off Staten Island, and the other in Wainscott, NY, near East Hampton on Long Island, the groups said in Facebook posts. Both were located in a triangular section of the Atlantic Ocean known as the New York Bight, stretching from Cape May in New Jersey to Montauk at the tip of Long Island.
The groups said in their statements that biologists from multiple organizations, including government agencies, helped move the whales. Other details were not immediately available.
It’s been a tough few months for whales along the East Coast. Between early December and late February, 23 of them washed ashore dead, 12 in waters off New York or New Jersey. Most were humpback whales.
The overall western Atlantic humpback whale population is not at risk, according to NOAA. (Four of the animal’s 14 different populations remain endangered — in the waters of Central America, northwest Africa, the Middle East and the western North Pacific.)
Still, NOAA officials consider the spate of Atlantic whale deaths during the winter to be unusual. From the desk data also suggest that the number of humpback whale deaths along the Atlantic coast from Maine to Florida has risen since 2016.
Recent post-mortem examinations of humpback whales suggested that ship strikes were a likely cause of death. Scientists see deeper explanations for this. Whales tend to feed closer to shore due to, say, ocean warming associated with climate change. The coronavirus pandemic also led to an increase in freight shipments, which caused more than usual ship traffic to pass through the New York metropolitan area.
Humpback whales live in all of the world’s major oceans, often traveling thousands of miles between their breeding and feeding grounds, according to the International Whaling Commission. Before a global moratorium on commercial whaling came into effect in 1985, the world’s population of the animal had declined dramatically.