A humpback whale was spotted on Thursday swimming in New York’s Hudson River, sparking a social media frenzy.
Brad Hoylman-Sigal, president of Manhattan borough, was among those to share a photograph of the whale on Facebook, an image taken on Thursday morning and provided by Gotham Whale, a citizen science and education group that tracks marine mammals in New York’s waterways.
The group’s own post on X appealed for more information and photographs of the whale in an effort to help identify its origin and calculate its size.
On its Facebook page, it posted a short video of the whale rolling over and spraying water from its blowhole as a group of onlookers cheered. The whale was still present by early afternoon.
It is not known whether the whale is male or female, or if it arrived in the Hudson alone, or was swimming with company.
Humpback whales are usually solitary by nature, according to the environmental group Whale Trail, but can sometimes be spotted in groups upto 10 to 15 when feeding, or in short-term social groups.
Adult males can grow up to 48ft (14.6 meters) and weigh as much as 40 tons (36,287kg).
Sightings of humpbacks in the New York, once rare, are becoming increasingly common. In 2018, 272 whales were spotted in the city’s waters, Gotham Whale told the Guardian, and the group has documented numerous glimpses since.
As numbers have increased, however, so has the risk to the whales from shipping and other hazards.
The New York Times reported in January that more whales were found stranded, likening the danger to the species in New York’s busy waterways as “like deer crossing the road”.
