Good morning. It’s Monday. Today we’ll find out about who’s singing underwater in the New York Bight, the wedge in the Atlantic Ocean that serves as the entrance to New York Harbor. We’ll also get details on a fight over auto insurance premiums: Uber is on one side, and the state trial lawyers’ association is on the other.
In the spring, a sei whale’s thoughts turn lightly to the New York Bight, according to a new research paper.
Sei whales, pronounced “say,” are big — about 45,000 pounds. Only blue whales and fin whales are bigger. Sei whales been on the federal list of endangered species since 1970.
It was a sei whale that washed ashore on Rockaway Beach in Queens 10 days ago.
The research paper, published last week in the journal Scientific Reports, says that sei whales spend their spring break in the New York Bight. Howard Rosenbaum, an author of the paper and the director of the Ocean Giants Program at the Wildlife Conservation Society, said it was the first study to document such behavior. Sei whales’ part-time status sets them apart from fin whales, which a 2024 study found are year-rounders in the Atlantic off New York.
Listening to their songs
The eight scientists who wrote the paper reached that conclusion because sei whales sing.
The scientists recorded them vocalizing underwater — crooning, serenading, humming. The scientists recorded their songs from 2017 to 2020 with underwater microphones several miles offshore in the Atlantic.
Sei whales sing — mainly during the day — at extremely low frequencies: lower than a foghorn, lower than the lowest string on a bass guitar. There was less vocal activity at night, “when sei whales are thought to forage,” the paper said. And because the New York Bight is busy with container ships, tankers and fishing vessels passing through, it’s relatively noisy underwater. “Elevated noise levels during the daytime when sei whales are more vocal may make vital communication between sei whales challenging,” the Wildlife Conservation Society said in a summary of the paper.
Right about now
The acoustic data is clear: Sei whales visit the New York Bight from March to May — “right about now,” Rosenbaum said. About 95 percent of sei whale sounds were detected during that time, when the temperature in the water was 41 to 48 degrees Fahrenheit. The whales don’t like it hot: Their presence decreased when the water was warmer.
Rosenbaum said that “sei whales are using these habitats more than anyone thought.” That is consistent with the way in which whale populations have rebounded in the Atlantic in the last 40 years. “When we first started this work 10 years ago, people said a lot of the sightings are anomalous — if you saw a whale in the New York Bight, it was the sighting of a lifetime,” Rosenbaum said, “or the whale was stranded or sick.” He said the acoustic research had generated data showing that whales are present in “patterns that are consistent with time.”
But circulating in the New York Bight puts the whales at risk for collisions with cruise liners, container ships and other vessels they share the water with. A vessel strike was the apparent explanation for the death of the sei whale that washed ashore last month.
The 45-foot-long male had “extensive bruising” on one side of its body, according to the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society, a nonprofit that conducts research on the marine environment and released the preliminary findings of a necropsy. It was the second sei whale found dead in the last two years. In 2024, a cruise ship sailed into the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal with a 44-foot-long sei whale draped across its bow.
Weather
A sunny day is ahead with a high near 56. Tonight will be partly cloudy with a chance of rain and a low around 42.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Wednesday (Passover).
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Fifty-three years is a long time for this kind of thing.” — Ryan Griffiths, a professor at Syracuse University, on a secession fight in New Jersey. South Seaside Park, on the Jersey Shore, has just succeeded in leaving Berkeley Township and joining its neighbor, Seaside Park.
The latest Metro news
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A kitchen haven for those with autism: Joseph Valentino, a cook at Point Seven restaurant in Manhattan, helped inspire Chefs on the Spectrum, a program meant to train and place people with autism in fine-dining jobs.
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Uber and trial lawyers battle over an auto insurance bill
A fight over Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal to lower the cost of auto insurance is one of several disputes that are dragging out negotiations over the state budget, which was supposed to have been finished by April 1.
Hochul’s proposal would cap damages, which a powerful lawyers’ association opposes. The ride-share company Uber is pushing for the bill.
Both sides have deep pockets. The lawyers’ group, the Trial Lawyers Association, has channeled big money to state lawmakers’ campaigns. It has spent millions more on lobbyists close to the leaders of the State Senate and the Assembly. Uber has given about $8.3 million to Citizens for Affordable Rates, a lobbying group that has led a campaign for reforms, claiming that the auto insurance system is plagued by fraud.
Drivers in New York pay some of the highest rates in the country. In 2023, the Citizens Budget Commission, a fiscal watchdog group, said that premiums in New York were 32 percent above the national average. For Uber, cost is paramount: It’s one of the country’s biggest purchasers of auto insurance.
For the lawyers, the goal is preserving the legal fees paid to its members. The group also wants to expand accident victims’ right to sue.
My colleagues Benjamin Oreskes and Stefanos Chen wrote that some lawmakers seemed reluctant to approve the insurance proposals, citing arguments seemingly taken from the trial lawyers. The governor, a Democrat, has in turn circulated talking points written by Citizens for Affordable Rates. She has argued that similar insurance reforms in other high-cost states like Florida and Michigan have led to savings for drivers.
Uber says that more than 72,000 letters from drivers and passengers have been sent to state legislators. But Assemblyman Patrick Chludzinski, Republican of Buffalo, said that when he followed up with several constituents whose names were on emails he had received, they told him that they had not sent them. A spokesman for Uber did not comment on whether any of the letters had been unwittingly sent.
METROPOLITAN diary
Christmas past
Dear Diary:
On a brisk winter day in the early 1970s, I walked with my father in the area just north of the East Village where he had grown up in the 1930s and where Stuyvesant Town is now.
As we strolled with woolen scarves wound tightly about our necks, he showed me where Christmas tree sellers had kept themselves warm by making fires in a large metal garbage can.
Picking up the pace to stay warm, we saw vendors selling sweet potatoes, chestnuts and pretzels, all heated over charcoal fires. A hot pretzel kept one of my hands warm.
My grandparents had sold their grocery-deli in Hell’s Kitchen a few years before, and my grandmother now lived alone in a high-rise apartment building.
We decided to surprise her with a small tabletop tree, so we bought one in Midtown and stuffed it into the back seat of a cab we flagged down.
She cried with glee when we came in the door with my father holding the tree over his shoulder after dropping pine needles all over the elevator and hallway.
The two of them looked at each other and burst into laughter before including me in their private joke.
Back when they lived on 16th Street, people had disposed of their trees by dropping them out the window. Neighborhood children would pile the trees up like miniature pyramids.
My grandmother’s face soon went from a grin to a more serious expression.
“Now I’m way up on the 14th floor,” she said to my father. “Where are all the kids going to be when I’m done with this tree?”
— Kathryn Anne Sweeney-James
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
The post These Whales Live, and Sing, Near New York Harbor in Spring appeared first on New York Times.
