Whales Return to NYC Harbor
A variety of species of whales have been rediscovered in the vicinity of New York City. Is it because they love musicals? David Biello investigates
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[audio of blue whale song] That's the song of the blue whale, the largest animal on the planet. It's been sped up 30 times faster so that our ears can hear it. In reality, these infrasound songs were captured in 2009, off the coast of… Long Island?
That's right. Whales are back in the Big Apple. Endangered fin whales sing near the Verrazano Narrows while slightly farther out to sea humpback, right and the big blue whales call to each other. In fact, at least six species of baleen whales have been detected singing in the region.
Perhaps this isn't so surprising given that in the early 1800s some Long Island towns made their living from killing whales just offshore. But such whaling, paired with high seas expeditions, brought many whales to the brink of extinction.
In more recent decades, much whaling has been stopped, except for a few holdout nations, such as Japan and Norway. The end of the slaughter means the return of the whales, including intrepid individuals venturing back to their former homes just offshore from one of the largest urban areas in the world, full of noisy shipping.
Monitoring the whales' songs might help reveal some of what attracts them to the region, say scientists at the Cornell University Bioacoustics Research Program. But I think it's obvious. They want to sing on Broadway.
—David Biello
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