BOSTON – New England Aquarium researchers recently surveyed the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument about 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod.
The goal is to document the regions biodiversity and count the number of animals living and feeding there.
“We continue to see a huge amount of diversity in the marine mammal species that we see out there,” said assistant scientist Orla Obrien, from the Anderson Cabot Center For Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium.
In the span of six hours, the team spotted 322 different whales and dolphins, including two Blue Whales. The endangered species is rarely seen in the Northwest Atlantic. The entire population in the Northwest Atlantic is estimated to be only 250 animals.
Blue Whales are the largest animal on earth and can grow up to 100 feet long and weigh up to 140 tons. Although the sighting was extremely rare, the location of where the whales were sighted was not.
“It was not necessarily surprising where we spotted the whales, Blue Whales in other parts of the world tend to come to areas where the continental shelf breaks off and where you get these really deep submarine canyons, so the fact that we saw it in this part of the marine monument near oceanographers is not that surprising.”
The migratory paths of the Blue Whales during the winter are largely unknown, because of population and distance that the whales travel offshore.
In addition to the Blue Whales, the survey team also saw pilot, fin, sei, humpback, sperm, Sowerby’s beaked whales, common dolphins, bottle-nosed dolphins, and striped dolphins.
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