Jerry in New York Harbor. Photo by Steve Abbondondelo.
Whales are increasingly common in New York City’s waterways. Boaters should take note.
BY COLE SINANIAN
In a now-famous photo taken just yards from Rockaway Beach in September 2013, a humpback whale named Jerry thrusts his barnacle-encrusted head skyward, in near perfect alignment with the pinnacle of the Empire State Building towering in the distant haze.
Also known as NYC0011, Jerry’s yearly jaunts through the Big Apple’s waterways were closely tracked by Gotham Whale, a local organization dedicated to documenting the city’s substantial marine mammal population. Jerry hasn’t been seen since 2022, but his regular visits marked the beginning of a strange new trend: amid a changing ocean ecosystem brought by rising sea temperatures and pressures from human activity, as well as successful conservation efforts, whales are arriving to New York City’s waters in historic numbers. Most notable are humpback whales, which can be seen by the dozens in the spring and fall just off the Rockaway Peninsula for what may be the first time in recorded history. But also present are fin whales, minke whales, and the critically-endangered North Atlantic Right Whale, of which only 370 remain on Earth. Although great news for urban whale enthusiasts, scientists are concerned: what happens when some of the largest animals on Earth visit one of North America’s busiest cities?
A 26-foot female minke whale died in August after being struck by a private boat in Barnegat Bay, New Jersey. The graphic collision left blood in the water and sent one of the boat’s passengers overboard, an unfortunately not-uncommon occurrence in the waters of the New York/New Jersey Bight, where few boaters are expecting to encounter large marine mammals.
“A whale in shallow water and high traffic areas where people are not used to seeing them at all is a really dangerous scenario,” says Carl LoBue, a marine scientist with The Nature Conservancy.
According to Gotham Whale Director of Research, Danielle Brown, regular humpback sightings in New York are quite new, beginning in the early 2010s, and are the result of a complex set of factors. Atlantic menhaden, once-overfished, have returned to the area in large numbers after the success of fishery regulations put into place by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission in 2012. Meanwhile, as prey populations decrease in their typical feeding grounds off New England, migratory humpbacks have begun straying from their usual routes to chase menhaden schools into New York harbor.
“There’s not a lot of evidence that humpback whales were ever common here,” Brown says. “So this all seems to be relatively new, relatively recent, likely related to the changing waters up north in the Gulf of Maine and Canada. The ocean has been warming dramatically over the last decade, so that’s going to change fish. It’s going to move fish to new areas and the whales are going to follow the fish.”
New York City’s migrating humpbacks present a particular risk to boaters, LoBue says, as those seen closest to shore are usually young animals straying from their families further out to sea.They are focused on feeding, young and inexperienced with boats, and are likely to congregate in the same areas as fishermen. A May 2025 study suggested that a majority of humpback whales in the New York/New Jersey Bight exhibit either propeller or entanglement scars.
Jerry was especially recognizable during his New York visits for a jagged set of propeller gashes just below his dorsal fin. LoBue adds that whale collisions are almost as dangerous to humans as they are to the whales, comparing it to striking a large deer or moose with a car.
Jerry’s propeller scars. Photo by Paul Sieswerda.
“I know as a boater and a fisherman myself, no one wants to hit a whale,” LoBue says. “Imagine having your kids on the boat and you hit a whale. It’s brutal and it’s bloody. They scream like we do.”
After witnessing too many close calls out on the water, LoBue and his colleagues at The Nature Conservancy, in partnership with the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society, Coastal Research and Education Society of Long Island, Gotham Whale, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and the Wildlife Conservation Society, began work on a whale-safe boating course. Called Boating with Whales, the free online course offers “not a comprehensive guide to IDing whales,” LoBue says, but instead a primer in identifying when the mammals are nearby and how to operate a boat safely in their presence (such as by reducing speeds).“We’re giving people the skills they already want to have in their toolbox,” LoBue says.
The current New York State boating course does not have a whale safety section. In order for Boating with Whales to be taken by a majority of New York boaters, the course would have to both be integrated into the existing state boating course for new boaters, as well as spread widely among already-licensed boaters.
“It won’t completely eliminate the risk, but it’ll lower the risk,” LoBue says. “It’ll make the boaters safe. It’ll make the crew safe and it’ll make the whales safer. So that’s what we’re striving to do.”
