06/08/2025
It was a clear day in late July when an aerial survey team from the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life took off from New Bedford Airport. Their destination was the only U.S. marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean: the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument southeast of Nantucket.
They soon spotted more than 1,000 marine animals including an endangered fin whale and its calf, an endangered s***m whale, pilot whales, and a rich variety of other whales, dolphins, and rays.
In total on July 24, the team sighted seven endangered fin whales, one endangered s***m whale, one humpback whale, two minke whales, 781 common dolphins, 108 Risso’s dolphins, 55 pilot whales, 30 bottlenose dolphins, 20 striped dolphins, and 22 devil rays.
“Seeing an endangered fin whale and its calf is a rare occurrence,” said Kate Laemmle, Assistant Research Scientist who was aboard the plane during the survey. “Each survey speaks to the remarkable array of biodiversity that we see in the Monument. It’s a perspective that we as research scientists are so fortunate to see, and it reinforces why it is so essential to the health of our ocean and planet to protect these unique habitats and the endangered species that depend on them.”
Created nearly 10 years ago in 2016, the 5,000-square-mile Monument is located 100 miles southeast of Nantucket, a protected habitat with four underwater seamounts, or underwater mountains, and three deep-sea canyons, where a vast array of species feed. The steep slopes of the canyons create upwelling, a process that leads to an ecologically productive area. As a result, the Monument is a hotspot of biodiversity on the edge of the continental shelf where the shallow seas off New England drop sharply into the deep waters of the northwestern Atlantic.
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