New York City is known for a lot of things, but no one ever really equated "The City That Never Sleeps" with the appearance of whales. It may sound like something out of "Free Willy," but this new phenomenon is becoming more common off of Manhattan.
Apparently, massive humpback whales that are not indigenous to the New York City area have been sighted all over the place in the recent past. While New York is known for its massive amount of tourists in the summer, the visitors have taken a back seat to a much, much bigger visitor. It seems that the whales are also on a summer vacation of their own, as several of the giant creatures have made unexpected appearances in the city's waterways.
"It's becoming more and more frequent," Paul Siewada, from the Gotham Whale research division, told ABC News. "What's caused so much commotion is that people in New York City are just becoming aware that whales are in and around New York."
There have been a total of 49 whale sightings in and around Manhattan in 2014. The number of whales in the area has been on the rise in the past three years.
"We know [the whales] go from southern waters down to the coast of the Dominican Republic during the winter and go up to Maine and Massachusetts in the summer to feed," said Siewada. "We think the whales have found a suitable feeding ground right here in New York. My boat captain loves to say the New York City is the new Cape Cod."
This phenomenon has to do with the feeding ground in the New York, which has cleaner water for the whales to wade in, stopping them instead of continuing to migrate north to the Cape Cod area.
According to one expert, a humpback whale breached off the coast of Manhattan, and was just one of many to get in on the plentiful New York waters. There have already been 29 whale sightings from earlier in the spring through July 24. Some of the whales behavior includes "lunge feeding" and breaching the surface to blow water. It seems that this phenomenon is not just a random occurrence as more of the large mammals swim the New York waters that are ideal for the giant sea dwellers.
