Posted on 03/07/2024 5:47:33 AM PST by Red Badger
The whale was spotted 30 miles south of the Massachusetts island Friday diving and resurfacing, appearing to feed. Scientists say climate change may be why the species has reappeared.
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A gray whale south of Nantucket, Mass., on Friday.New England Aquarium
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A gray whale extinct from the Atlantic for more than 200 years was spotted off New England last week in an “incredibly rare event,” the New England Aquarium said.
The whale was spotted Friday 30 miles south of Nantucket, Massachusetts, diving and resurfacing, appearing to feed, the aquarium said in a news release.
The aquarium’s aerial survey team circled the whale’s area for about 45 minutes and took photos, and it later confirmed it was indeed a rare gray whale.
“My brain was trying to process what I was seeing, because this animal was something that should not really exist in these waters,” research technician Kate Laemmle, who was in the survey plane, said in a statement. “We were laughing because of how wild and exciting this was — to see an animal that disappeared from the Atlantic hundreds of years ago!”
Gray whales, which lack dorsal fins, have mottled grey and white skin, dorsal humps and pronounced ridges and are usually found in the North Pacific Ocean.
The species had disappeared from the Atlantic Ocean by the 18th century, in part because of whaling, the aquarium said. However, five have been observed in the Atlantic and Mediterranean waters in the last 15 years, including a sighting in December off Florida.
The aquarium said scientists believe the gray whale they spotted is the same one sighted in Florida late last year.
So why are the sightings happening now? Scientists say climate change plays a part.
"The Northwest Passage, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific through the Arctic Ocean in Canada, has regularly been ice-free in the summertime in recent years, partly due to rising global temperatures," the aquarium said.
Without the sea ice that usually limits the range of gray whales, they can "potentially travel the Passage in the summer, something that wouldn’t have been possible in the previous century," the release said.
Orla O’Brien, an associate research scientist in the aquarium's Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life who flies aerial surveys, said in a statement: “These sightings of gray whales in the Atlantic serve as a reminder of how quickly marine species respond to climate change, given the chance.”
If it is the same one spotted in Florida, I think it is more likely that it came thru the Panama Canal or around South America.
Climate change causes extinct species to reappear.
Is there nothing it can not do?
Temperature change effects the nature and quality of the rains that fall producing the continental erosion of mineral salts that actually create oceanic salinity. The oceanic salinity is manifested in differential oceanic water strata that change the fish and marine organism balance.
The oceanic strata have now resumed a disposition favored by gray whales
He fancied a swim
to waters less grim
So he went to the beaches of Phuket
If you're going to apply spots to whales, Nantucket's the place to do that:
There once was an artist from Nantucket
Who kept all of his spots in a bucket.
When along came a whale
That was wagging its tail
He used up all his spots as he stuck it.
One news show I saw mentioned it may have come thru the NW Passage last summer/fall................
I’m pretty sure the whale used Amtrak to save its strength. Or maybe Delta airlines on a Boeing 737 so it could bang open the defective door and slide right out in the ocean.
They over fished, and the population has recovered. It’s nature.
The whale was probably there searching for limericks.
This is a simple example of evolution happening right before our eyes! One day, scientific experts were looking at a pool of primordial soup, and a year later, POOF. That guy Darwin is so smart!
“Scientists say climate change may be why the species has reappeared.”
Yeah? So, climate change is good now?
Climate Change can raise the dead!.....................
“Heal the sick, raise the dead. Make the little girls talk outta their heads. I’m the one, oh, I’m the one. I’m the one, I’m the one. The one they call the seventh son”
Only change the last part to “they call the climate change son”
Hillary in the water?
Maybe the gray whales are fleeing the left coast for less crime and taxes.
Maybe the GRAY whales are fleeing the left coast because of the GAY whales...............
If it was last seen in the 1800’s wasn’t that during the “Little Ice Age”. And if so, wouldn’t the NW passage been frozen shut? Asking for a friend.
They were hunted to extinction in the Atlantic, and it took them this long to filter back from the Pacific, possibly through the NW Passage.........................
Extinct is an absolute. It is or it isn't. There's no such thing as "extinct in one location but extant in another."
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