A gray whale is seen south of Nantucket, Mass., on Friday. The mammals have not been seen in New England waters for centuries. in 1725 about a “scrag whale” that could be seen off New England’s coast. The account is one of the last known documentations of the gray whale in the Atlantic.
But the 90,000-pound mammals, which still inhabit the Pacific Ocean, appear to be returning to the Atlantic. Last week, an aerial survey team from the New England Aquarium spotted a gray whale about 30 miles south of Nantucket, Mass., the aquarium said in a Researchers suspect the return of the gray whales is due to warming global temperatures that have melted arctic ice floating in the Northwest Passage in northern Canada.“The extent of the sea ice typically limits the species range of gray whales … as the whales cannot break through the thick winter ice that usually blocks the Passage,” the aquarium said. “Now, gray whales can potentially travel the Passage in the summer, something that wouldn’t have been possible in the previous century.
Since January 2019, there has been an increase in gray whale strandings across North America’s western coast, from Mexico to Alaska,