How a cleaner New York Harbor is drawing whales into the path of ships
A humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) feeding in front of the New York City skyline. Credit: Chris St Lawrence/Gotham Whale
“First of all, they’re not returning,” explains Research Director Danielle Brown of Gotham Whale. “This is an entirely new phenomenon. Our data - compiled these last 14 years - doesn’t indicate they’ve been here before.”
Locations of the Port of New York and New Jersey, the New York Bight, commercial shipping lanes and precautionary areas, and the New York Bight Apex. Sources: Esri, GEBCO, NOAA, National Geographic, DeLorme, HERE, Geonames.org, and other contributors (Esri, 2022a,b). Courtesy of Frontiers
“They” are humpback whales: hunted to near oblivion for oil and baleen, legally protected for 50 years and making a slow comeback, with females birthing a single calf every two or three years.
Now, they delight hundreds of whale-watchers cruising New York Bight, a triangular-shape in the Atlantic coastline stretching from Cape May Inlet, New Jersey, to the eastern tip of Long Island, New York.
Within this shallow oceanic triangle, the marine mammal research, education, and advocacy nonprofit, Gotham Whale, have identified humpback (Megaptera novaeangliae), minke (Balaenoptera acutorostrata), fin (Balaenoptera physalus), sperm (Physeter macrocephalus) and endangered North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) since 2011.
A photo-identification catalog, often called a "fluke wall," used by marine researchers to track individual humpback whales by the unique black-and-white patterns on their tail flukes. Courtesy of Gotham Whales
In August, Gotham Whale identified its 500th humpback by unique patterns on the whale’s fluke, its “tailprint.” Their Staten Island office is wallpapered with dozens of whale fluke images, against which photos submitted by citizen- scientists are compared. Sightings along the humpbacks’ north-south migratory route pinpoint where and how quickly individual whales travel.
Dr. Brown estimates 30 percent of the humpback whales spotted in NYC harbor are from the Gulf of Maine feeding grounds; another five percent belong to the Eastern Canada population and were seen as far north as Newfoundland. “The rest have never been seen before.”
Humpbacks narrowly escaped extinction thanks to a combination of a 1986 international (but unenforced) moratorium on hunting; two (besieged) federal laws; and 14 city sewage treatment plants. Each plant has had billion-dollar upgrades to better filter excreta of 8.58 million New Yorkers, reduce nitrogen levels, and increase dissoluble oxygen in the harbor.
Add to that efforts of nonprofit groups like Hudson’s Riverkeepers who patrol the Hudson, educate the public and sue polluters. There’s also the natural detox effect of 19 acres of newly restored oyster reef in NY’s harbor, courtesy of the Billion Oyster Project. Science director Mike McCann tells me that over 183 million oysters comprise the not-quite self-sustaining reefs, “each filtering ~50 gallons of water per day.”
As oysters clean the water and allow more sunlight penetration, plankton multiply, attracting schools of protein-rich, oily, silver fish - Atlantic menhaden (Brevoortia tyrannus), also known as bunker fish.
Atlantic menhaden fish. Credit: Brian Gratwicke/CC BY 2.0
These filter-feeding fish “turn sunlight into whales,” says Nature Conservancy Director Carl LoBue. “Humpback, fin, and minke whales all eat menhaden. If menhaden is plentiful, whales linger. If menhaden dwindles, they move on.”
Atlantic menhaden are only 8 to 11” long and barely weigh a pound. A single humpback whale can eat 3,000 of them per day. Striped bass, bluefish, tuna, sharks, dolphins, eagles and ospreys eat menhaden, too - when they can get them.
But ospreys from Chesapeake Bay to Connecticut seemingly no longer can.
Roberta Kellam, who has observed osprey nesting pairs for 22 years, has been recording hungry adults and starving chicks these past few years. “Ospreys are a sentinel species,” she writes. “Whale advocates should voice their concerns.”
Bryan Watts, Director of The Center for Conservation Biology is more circumspect: “Ospreys are near-shore feeders who do not venture offshore where whales typically feed. Although it would be a dramatic shift, it is possible menhaden no longer swim inshore where ospreys seek them, but remain abundant further out.”
Assuming the ospreys’ (Pandion haliaetus) dire prediction is correct, future decline in Atlantic menhaden numbers is not the most immediate worry for whales in New York harbor. Collision is.
New York harbor is noisy and chaotic: canoes and cargo ships, jet skiers and schooners, licensed and unlicensed charter boats speeding along, with multi-agency, sporadic enforcement of rules.
“Rules are written in blood,” Roland Rexha of the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association tells me. “They’re only put in place after someone loses their life.”
The harbor is crowded, too. According to the U.S. Coast Guard, 60,928 commercial vessels and 760 recreational ones traveled between Sandy Hook, NJ and the Rockaways in 2024.
Feeding around the nation’s third busiest port is life-threatening for juvenile whales: nearly 20 percent of humpbacks in Gotham Whale’s catalog show propeller scars, visible proof of vessel strikes. Take NYC0476, for example, sighted October 2 in the New York Bight by American Princess Cruises. Researchers noticed her propeller injuries and difficulty feeding.
Two weeks later, the 29’ long juvenile humpback washed onto a sandbar off Long Beach Island - emaciated, a “heavy parasite load in her kidneys,” and propeller wounds across both sides of her dorsal area. After suffering overnight, she died.
"The ones that hit the hardest are animals like this young whale who never got the chance to contribute to their species," the Marine Mammal Stranding Center (MMSC) said in a statement.
According to NOAA’s 2016–2026 chart of humpback whale deaths from Florida to Maine, New York’s coastline is the deadliest for whales (38 deaths), followed by Massachusetts (30) and N. Carolina (28). Necropsies on over 129 individuals showed nearly half the humpbacks had drowned in nets, become entangled in vertical lobster trap ropes, or were hit by a boat.
Like NYC0476, the vast majority (93 percent) of humpback whales struck by vessels in the New York Bight are juveniles. Dr. LoBue believes young humpbacks may be “less educated on the risks of boat traffic than older, more experienced whales.”
The way humpbacks feed on Atlantic menhaden also exposes them to collision: suddenly surfacing, open-mouthed, lunging at schools of fish to scoop up as many as possible.
“Lunge feeding gives no warning to boaters and puts whales directly in front of oncoming ships,”explains Dr. Brown of Gotham Whale. “When lunge feeding, whales are distracted, lunging repeatedly. They may hear a ship, but not realize how quickly it’s approaching.”
Despite having eyeballs the size of grapefruit, humpbacks have poor eyesight. Were they human, they’d be legally blind.
On July 6, a humpback sank a New Jersey Fire Department rescue boat in Raritan Bay. No humans were injured, but the incident underscored the need for safer navigation around whales.
Enter New York’s Whale Awareness Act (A8515A/S.2292B), which directs that whale-collision prevention be incorporated into boater safety courses and whale education material be included as new vessels, register with the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) for a license.
The Whale Awareness Act was sponsored by New York’s state Senator Pete Harckham and Assembly Member Rebecca Kassay, who studied environmental science and worked at the Avalon Nature Preserve before turning to politics. Both attended Governor Hochul’s signing ceremony at historic Montauk Lighthouse on August 7.
New York's Department of Environmental Conservation assured us that the whale-related supplement will be ready by Feb. 3, 2027, when the law takes effect.
Due to the Marine Mammal Protection Act, it is illegal to hunt, harass, capture, or kill any marine mammal in U.S. waters and the import or export of their body parts or products is prohibited. But now, Republicans in Congress are attempting to weaken this crucial protection at the behest of the commercial fishing industry. Join Species Unite in urging Congress to reject any legislative attacks on this vital law.
Written by Tamara Bedić, Esq.
Tamara Bedić, Esq. is a New York attorney, championing women in the workplace. When she's not litigating, she is rescuing injured birds, chairing the Animal Rights Committee of the National Lawyers Guild or walking her special needs cat, ILLYA.
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A cleaner New York Harbor has drawn hundreds of humpback whales back to its waters for the first time in generations, but the same busy port that welcomes them is also killing them.