For years, whale watching enthusiasts have flocked to West Coast shores to catch a glimpse of migrating gray whales. These gentle giants inhabit waters in the Pacific Ocean, while their numbers in the Atlantic Ocean gradually dwindled to the point of extirpation, or local extinction, centuries ago. It came as a colossal shock, then, when a single gray whale was spotted on the other side of the country near New England earlier this month.
On March 1, aquarium scientists first noticed the whale diving and resurfacing during an aerial survey 30 miles south of Nantucket, as explained in a news release. This turned out to be the fifth documented observation of a gray whale outside the Pacific in the last 15 years. One was previously seen off the coast of Florida in December 2023, although scientists now think this is the same whale just seen near New England.
“My brain was trying to process what I was seeing, because this animal was something that should not really exist in these waters," said Kate Laemmle, a research technician who was in the plane, in a press release. “We were laughing because of how wild and exciting this was — to see an animal that disappeared from the Atlantic hundreds of years ago!"
