Whale that vanished from Atlantic over 200 years ago spotted off Massachusetts

Scientists from the New England Aquarium (NEA) in Boston have been flying off the coast of Nantucket on Friday once they noticed a leviathan that has been extinct for over 200 years: a grey whale.

The workforce of scientists was flying about 30 miles south of Nantucket once they spotted the uncommon whale.

As the whale continued to dive and resurface as if it have been feeding, the aerial survey airplane continued to circle the world for 45 minutes, giving the scientists time to seize images and make sense of what they have been seeing.

The workforce reviewed photos collectively and confirmed what they noticed was a grey whale.

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Scientists from the New England Aquarium in Boston spotted a grey whale off the coast of Nantucket on Friday. (New England Aquarium)

“I didn’t want to say out loud what it was, because it seemed crazy,” Orla O’Brien, an affiliate analysis scientist at NEA mentioned.

O’Brien works on the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, and has been flying aerial surveys for 13 years.

Research Technician Kat Laemmle was with O’Brien on the airplane when O’Brien confirmed her images whereas the whale went underwater.

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Scientists from the New England Aquarium in Boston spotted a grey whale off the coast of Nantucket on Friday. (New England Aquarium)

“My brain was trying to process what I was seeing, because this animal was something that should not really exist in these waters,” Laemmle mentioned. “We were laughing because of how wild and exciting this was — to see an animal that disappeared from the Atlantic hundreds of years ago.”

While grey whales usually are not sometimes discovered within the Atlantic, they’re frequently discovered within the North Pacific, in keeping with NEA officers.

The whales are described as not having a dorsal fin whereas donning mottled grey and white pores and skin and a dorsal hump. As the hump descends to the tail, a sequence of pronounced ridges might be seen.

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Scientists from the New England Aquarium in Boston spotted a grey whale off the coast of Nantucket on Friday. (New England Aquarium)

Despite disappearing from the Atlantic Ocean by the 18th century, the species has been making a comeback to the world. In reality, there have been 5 observations of grey whales within the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean waters over the previous 15 years, together with off the coast of Florida in December 2023.

The one spotted off the coast of Nantucket on Friday is believed to be the identical grey whale noticed off Florida in December.

Scientists say the unusual sightings might be attributed to local weather change, explaining that the Northwest Passage, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by the Arctic Ocean in Canada, has been ice-free through the summers in current years, due partially to rising temperatures throughout the globe.

The sea ice sometimes limits the place the grey whales are in a position to journey as they’re unable to interrupt by the thick winter ice that blocks the passage, the aquarium mentioned.

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But with much less ice within the passage throughout summer season months, grey whales could possibly journey to areas not visited by the species in centuries.

“While we expect to see humpback, right, and fin whales, the ocean is a dynamic ecosystem, and you never know what you’ll find,” O’Brien mentioned. “These sightings of gray whales in the Atlantic serve as a reminder of how quickly marine species respond to climate change, given the chance.”