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DR. HOWARD ROSENBAUM: I think it's
one of these amazing wildlife spectacles when you actually
see these bait balls or these large schools of menhaden.
Those are small-schooling fish.
Sometimes these pods are about the size of a football field.
When something ripples to the surface across the big ball,
typically, there is a predator either nearby or just beneath
them-- could be a shark, a large fish--
hitting, if you will, the outer portions of that school.
And then to have some of the largest animals that have ever
inhabited this planet feeding on them, I mean,
that's, to me, is an amazing marine wildlife spectacle just
miles from beaches that people enjoy on the weekend,
and even at other times with the New York City
skyline in the background.
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I'm Dr. Howard Rosenbaum.
I direct the Ocean Giants Program for the Wildlife
Conservation Society.
We use scientific tools and approaches
to protect large whales and other marine life
in the New York Bight.
The New York Bight is the body of water
that lies between the tip of Montauk and Cape May,
New Jersey, all the way into the coast, areas like Fire Island,
New York Harbor, and then down the New Jersey
coast to Sandy Hook, New Jersey and points
along the Jersey Shore.
In the New York Bight, there's a great deal of marine life
that most people aren't aware of, many species of fish,
and sharks, and turtles.
Increasingly, we're seeing what appears
to be more abundant menhaden in our waters.
And with that, we have increasing habitat use
of some of the large whales in some of these waters.
The fin whale, they're present during large portions
of the year here to a greater extent
compared to those other baleen whale species.
Most of them are seasonally migrating here.
That includes the humpback whale, the North Atlantic right
whale, the sei whale, the minke whale.
Some may spend more time here than we expected.
And that's something that our research
is beginning to tease out.
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So we use a suite of tools to study and learn
more about whales in the New York Bight.
They range from boat-based surveys,
where we're out and looking for whales, to the most
cutting-edge type tools.
Right now, we have deployed in the New York Bight,
in collaboration with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution,
a near-real-time acoustic monitoring buoy.
So any time there is a whale vocalizing,
one of four species, we get a notification of those animals
being present in the New York Bight.
For example, in a nine-month period,
we had vocalizations on something
like 218 of those days.
So that provides extremely valuable information.
Because we've located this buoy, an intersection
between the shipping lanes, but also
an area that's considered potential for wind energy
development.
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When we go out and do surveys, we
collect the full suite of information
when we come across a particular whale groups.
We're logging the positions of where we detect the whales.
We'll collect individual identification photographs.
For some of the work, we'll actually collect a small tissue
samples for genetic analysis.
We will use a crossbow with a hollow-tipped dart
that we will shoot into the epidermis for the whale.
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[DART SHOOTS]
What gives you the best target is when they arch their backs.
And you're actually catching them
in the middle of a flute and dive.
And all of the sudden, you've just kind of
startled them a little bit.
And so they kind of just bring their flutes down
and slap them on the water.
In truth be told, this is kind of like getting bit
by a mosquito.
Most of the time, the sample will be retained into the bolt.
With that DNA, we can determine the sex
of that animal, population identity or individual identity
of those animals we just sampled.
So we can get amazing information
from that one little bit of tissue.
20 years ago, in the waters of New York City, wow,
you're really lucky if you got to see a whale.
But we're seeing now, in essence,
from important environmental legislation, whether it
was the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species
Act, good fisheries management, all
of these things at some level acting in concert with one
another have certainly allowed for us to have
this amazing wildlife spectacle, as we said,
occur right here in New York Bight.
There are obviously some concerns too.
Animals getting hit by ships are of great concern.
The noise associated with shipping and other activities
is of great concern.
As there are more menhaden, are those fisheries
regulated and monitored well enough to make
sure that those stocks don't get depleted?
What happens in a changing climate?
We have to try to figure out how to protect
these animals in light of some of these activities that
are either ongoing and/or projected.
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And I think there's a great opportunity for the residents
and denizens of the greater New York City
area to take pride in this and to get behind all of this--
the most amazing, wonderful experiences
that you can ever imagine.
It really never gets old.
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