Photo: George D. Lepp / Corbis Documentary / Getty Images
A survey team from the New England Aquarium made a stunning discovery in the waters off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, last week. The aquarium said the team was flying about 30 miles off the coast when they spotted a gray whale breaching the surface of the water.
The researchers watched for 45 minutes as the whale dove and resurfaced while feeding.
What makes the sighting exciting is that scientists thought that gray whales have been extinct in the Atlantic Ocean for over 200 years.
“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 said 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!”
The aquarium explained that gray whales are regularly found in the North Pacific Ocean but disappeared from the Atlantic Ocean in the 18th century. However, over the past 15 years, there have been five confirmed sightings of a gray whale in the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea.
The most recent sighting was in December 2023, when the same whale spotted off the coast of Nantucket was seen swimming off the coast of Florida.
Scientists believe the whales are moving into the Atlantic during the summer when the Northwest Passage, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the Arctic Ocean, is ice-free.