Just before noon on a Sunday in October, passengers settled onto the upper deck of the American Princess, a 95-foot cruising vessel that departed from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, into the Atlantic Ocean in search of whales.
They did not have to wait long to find one. After rounding Breezy Point, Queens, the captain cut the engine and the sightseers rushed to the port side as the glassy-gray ridge of a humpback’s dorsal fin broke the surface of the waves.
The crew had encountered the 29-foot, 12,700-pound female three days earlier and saw more than a dozen shallow scars running along her back.
Two weeks later, the same whale washed up on a sandbar off Long Beach Island, N.J., and died the next day. Officials with the Marine Mammal Stranding Center, an animal rescue service based in New Jersey, determined that a ship’s propeller had wounded her in August. A necropsy found that she was severely underweight and had signs of kidney disease, the facility said.
After being hunted into near-oblivion, whale populations have slowly rebounded across the Atlantic since the passage of several protective measures, including an international moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986. Researchers have recently observed more whales lingering off New York Harbor to feast on sand lances, Atlantic menhaden and other tiny fish instead of continuing to their traditional feeding grounds in the Gulf of Maine.
They are far from alone on New York’s aquatic interstate. Traffic from container ships, tankers and fishing vessels has become more congested since the coronavirus pandemic, which has led to collisions and entanglements contributing to whale strandings in New York and New Jersey. Efforts to slow down smaller crafts have stalled, and federal laws protecting marine mammals are being weakened.
“There are little invisible highways going through humpback territory,” said Joy Reidenberg, who studies the structure and function of animal bodies at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine. “It’s like a deer crossing the road. They don’t know there’s a boat coming, and what we have is oceanic road kill.”
Scientists are still trying to understand why New York has become a whale destination.
Over the past 15 years, Gotham Whale, a nonprofit monitoring New York’s marine life, identified 486 different humpbacks in the New York Bight, the crescent-shaped body of water between Cape May, N.J., and Montauk Point on the East End of Long Island. It also identified several less common minke and federally endangered fin, sei, sperm and North Atlantic Right whales, among the rarest in the world. Researchers have observed about 70 to 90 humpbacks annually since 2019 but counted 168 last year, a record for the nonprofit.
The Gulf of Maine’s water temperatures have risen because of the effects of climate change, and many whales are spending more months near New York to feed. The harbor has gotten cleaner thanks to years of investments upgrading wastewater infrastructure and pilings, prompting the return of maritime wildlife. State restrictions capping the amount of menhaden commercial fishermen can harvest and prohibiting large nets, known as purse seins, have allowed fish populations to bloom.
Many humpbacks spotted near the coastline are under the age of 6 or older adults past breeding age. Scientists believe juveniles are avoiding competition with adults and have found an abundant supply of prey instead of traveling further north.
“If you’re a juvenile, you’re not interested in mating or giving birth,” Ms. Reidenberg said, adding, “We’re seeing a pattern of young whales and older whales hanging off New York waters because it’s a compromise.”
Their seafood buffet happens to span one of the busiest waterways in the nation. The Port of New York-New Jersey is the busiest on the East Coast and among the top three busiest ports in the nation. In 2024, in a slightly down year, 60,928 commercial vessels and 760 recreational crafts, like personal yachts and fishing boats, traveled through the Ambrose Channel, the primary shipping lane for the port that runs between Sandy Hook, N.J., and the Rockaways, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.
The amount of cargo entering New York Harbor has swelled since the pandemic, when many importers redirected shipments toward the Northeast. Cargo volumes jumped 11 percent between 2023 and 2024, and 2,678 vessels docked at the region’s ports in 2024, the highest number since 2015, Port Authority records showed.
Reports of beached whales have become more common, too. Between 1980 and 2009, the New York region had an average of two to three strandings a year, according to records from the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society. From 2017 to 2025, the annual average jumped to over 11, with nearly half of the whales showing signs of human interference, such as broken bones from vessel strikes or wounds from propellers or fishing gear. New Jersey saw a similar increase, with 77 strandings during the nine-year span.
Marine mammals are particularly vulnerable to collisions with large tankers, whose force can fold their bodies in half. Humpbacks have such poor eyesight that they cannot recognize the ship’s bulbous bow closing in.
“The whale might hear the ship but doesn’t realize it is approaching because the sound is coming from propellers or the engine closer to stern,” said Danielle Brown, a Rutgers University ecology postdoctoral student and Gotham Whales research director. “When they’re feeding, they’re distracted and actively lunging over and over.”
The crew may not notice they struck a whale until they dock. When an MSC cruise liner sailed into Brooklyn in May 2024, its captain discovered a 44-foot endangered sei whale splayed across its bow. The whale was in good health before the ship fractured its shoulder blade, AMSEAS scientists concluded.
Smaller crafts can also cause serious injuries. Whales have become so used to the sounds of boats that they sidle next to them while they eat, researchers say. Fishermen trawling for tuna and striped bass can charge toward schools of menhaden, ignoring the likelihood that whales are present.
“The whale is essentially a marker that there could be tuna around,” said Charles Witek, a recreational fisherman on Long Island. He added, “I know anglers who have hooked whales accidentally.”
Fishing gear poses its own threats. When a whale encounters long vertical ropes attached to lobster traps, it instinctively rolls away, unintentionally wrapping the thick twine around its dorsal fin, tail and mouth.
“That drag wears the whale down and it can cut into its flesh, causing infections or even severing part of its tail or flipper, and prevent it from feeding,” Ms. Reidenberg said.
Efforts to strengthen federal laws to reduce the risk of collisions and entanglements have made little progress.
In 2022, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sought to reduce speed limits for vessels between 35 and 65 feet to no more than 10 knots from November to May, when right whales migrate through the Mid-Atlantic. The rule had only applied to ships longer than 65 feet, but NOAA withdrew its proposal in January after intense lobbying from the sports fishing industry.
In July, House Republicans drafted revisions to the Marine Mammal Protection Act that could allow more harassment of sea mammals and delay restrictions on fishing gear. Four months later, the Trump administration proposed new rules for the Endangered Species Act that would allow encroachment in their habitats and ignore any effects of climate change.
New York’s anglers and maritime advocacy groups have floated their own solutions. Yacht dealers are experimenting with pricey thermal cameras that use artificial intelligence to identify objects and share data with nearby boaters. Some commercial fishermen have purchased breakaway fishing line and ropeless traps with acoustic signals, which is much more expensive than regular fishing gear.
The least costly option is a free online course. The 30-minute tutorial, which the Nature Conservancy and several other organizations launched in September, offers boat operators tips to recognize whales in the ocean and avoid crashing into one.
“The reality is too many whales are getting hit by boats, and it’s not just big ships,” said Carl Lobue, a marine scientist with the Nature Conservancy. “Nobody wants to hit a whale.”
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