More fish, more whales, more ships – and more whale attacks

Good morning. We’ll look at what may have been behind the deaths of two more humpback whales off the coast of New York and New Jersey. We will also see why several hundred convictions are handed down in Manhattan.

The Facebook post about the two whale deaths said the cause was “suspected blunt force trauma.”

They were the latest deaths in a difficult year: 23 dead whales have been found so far in 2023 from Maine to Florida, four more than in all of 2022. Twelve of them apparently died off the coast of New York and New Jersey, twice as much as in 2022.

The two most recent deaths occurred separately on Thursday. One of the whales, a 14-meter-long male, was buried on the beach at Hampton Bays, Long Island. The other whale, a 28-foot female, was towed from Raritan Bay to the Gateway National Recreation Area in Sandy Hook, NJ. NOAA Fisheries New England-Mid-Atlanticpart of the national Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationsaid they both had bruises along with other injuries.

So what happened? Did they collide with ships? Paul Sieswerda, Executive Director of Gotham whale, a New York-based whale research and advocacy group, said Tuesday it was likely the other way around. “Where and how they get hit is still a question,” he said.

Many humpback whales that wash ashore are juveniles, as some 93 percent of humpback whales hit by ships in the New York Bight, according to research by four scientists from Stony Brook University and one from the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society on Long Island. And there’s no question that the shipping lanes around New York are busy these days, Sieswerda said, so it’s like “they’re playing in traffic.”

Some marine experts say online shopping has contributed to higher mortality by putting more whales in the way of more ships carrying produce to New York and New Jersey ports. And the ships themselves are bigger than they ever were. New Jersey ports became accessible to the world’s largest freighters in 2017, after the Bayonne Bridge was raised, increasing the vertical clearance below it.

More food, more problems

The ship strikes seem to be a flip side of what Frank Quevedo, the executive director of the South Fork Natural History Museum on Long Island called a success story. There is more food in the waters around New York today – especially the Atlantic menhaden. They are “the most important fish in the ocean” because “everything feeds on them,” Quevedo said.

Whales, dolphins, sharks, ospreys and eagles all like menhaden, he said. The same goes for striped bass. The menhaden population has grown, Quevedo said Tuesday, due to a four-year-old state law that prohibits fishermen from using large nets to attack shoals of menhaden. The nets, some as large as six city blocks, were weighted at the bottom and could be closed at the top, trapping the fish.

Eliminating the nets left more menhaden in the water, he said, attracting whales that hungered for them. Sieswerda added: “We used to like to say that New York was a place to come for good food – and the whales felt the same way. But the risk has multiplied, sorry to say. It’s more dangerous for the whales now.”

Or, as Quevedo put it, the whales “interact with ships and boats, their larger propellers.”

“Once you get hit by a freighter or a commercial tugboat,” he said, “it’s like us, when we get hit by a car.”

Weather

Haze and smoke drifting our way from Canadian wildfires are expected to continue today, but likely to vary in intensity. That means the air quality is probably close to or at an unhealthy level, and it would be worth checking the air quality in your area before doing anything outdoors for an extended period of time.

Beyond that, prepare for a chance of showers and temperatures around the mid-70s throughout the day. Tonight it will be partly cloudy and the temperature will drop above 50 degrees.

ALTERNATIVE SIDE PARKING

Effective until June 19 (June 10th).

The latest New York news

First, a group of police officers, sergeants and detectives were convicted of crimes related to their work. Now hundreds of cases they worked on are thrown away.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement that his office was seeking the dismissal of more than 300 convictions for due process violations. The oldest dates back to 1996, the most recent to 2017. The vast majority involved misconduct, and they were thrown into Manhattan Criminal Court on Tuesday. My colleague Hurubie Meko writes that two more felonies, along with eight felonies, are expected to be thrown in the state Supreme Court in Manhattan today.

Bragg, who has emphasized police accountability since taking office last year, said he “continues to prioritize investigating and exonerating convictions that undermine confidence in the criminal justice system.” Bragg’s office has reviewed more than 1,100 cases brought by 22 former police officers convicted of crimes.

Eight of the officers who filed the cases cleared Tuesday have been convicted on charges including official misconduct, planting evidence, taking bribes and lying under oath. A ninth officer, Oscar Sandino, has been convicted of two counts of deprivation of civil rights, a federal felony, for coerced sexual misconduct against two women in custody.

Lawyers have said a challenge they face is notifying everyone who has vacated a case. Elizabeth Felber, the head of the Legal Aid Society’s wrongful convictions unit, said after a round of layoffs in November that someone from Legal Aid had been assigned to check databases for phone numbers.

Felber said in a statement Tuesday that she hoped “this moment provides some justice and closure” to the people whose lives were impacted by the officers’ actions.

But she added: “The sad reality is that many were forced to suffer incarceration, high legal costs, loss of employment, housing instability, lost access to critical benefits and other collateral consequences.”

METROPOLITAN Diary

Defying the jackhammer

Dear Diary:

I work in the voice over industry, which has completely shifted to home recording during the pandemic. I already had the quintessential New York City home studio: a cubicle, covered with foam and sound-dampening tiles, where I recorded countless auditions and odd jobs.

So I was prepared in 2020 when I landed a series of national TV commercials that would run for months and into the holidays. It was a big deal.

I enjoyed the news for a moment before the sound of Con Edison working outside reminded me that the gas lines were being replaced. My studio may be dead quiet, but nothing defies the mighty jackhammer.

I dragged myself into the street looking for a man with a clipboard.

“Wondering what your Monday schedule is from 1pm-2pm?” I cried when I found him. “I’m a voiceover and I’ve booked a commercial and…”

“Monday, huh?” he called back, scanning the clipboard. “We have planned work that will be quite noisy.”

My heart sank.

“But these are crazy times,” he said. “I will see what I can do.”

When Monday morning came, Con Ed was noisy at work. At the stroke of 1 o’clock, however, the street came to a complete standstill. It stayed that way for an hour.

—Sarah Sweeney