While Humpback Whales have made an amazing recovery, about 100 whales have died on the east coast since 2016. NOAA considers this an unusual mortality event. Necropsies have been performed on about half these whales and showed about 50% had evidence of ship strikes or entanglement. The shipping lanes in our area are some of the busiest in the world so this will continue to be a huge threat.
Besides ship strike, another concern is floating garbage. A recent report claims that the Hudson River is the cleanest it has been in over 100 years, which is one of the reasons we are seeing so many whales now. But floating garbage and plastic are still a big problem. It was sad to run into a bunch of floating debris near where the whale was feeding. Celia sent me a few images of the garbage in the photos below. As you can see, a whale could easily ingest this toxic mess when feeding.
