A distinctive but unusual shape was seen rising out of the Hudson River on a dreary Thursday in New York City, dipping in and out of the waters and sending up long puffs of vapor into the misty air.
It was a humpback whale, according to crew members aboard various vessels out on the waterway.
Capt. Cait Field, a general manager at the Classic Harbor Line, a boat tour agency in Manhattan, said she saw the whale in the afternoon while she was sailing aboard the Kingston — the first whale she had seen on the Hudson.
“Pretty neat,” she said. The whale sighting lit up the radio communication lines among her colleagues, who quickly pinged one another about the rare humpback appearance.
“Everyone was calling each other around to make sure they knew it was there and that they were seeing it, not missing it,” she said.
“‘Do you see the whale?’ one boat radioed,” she said. “And I was like: ‘I saw it. Thank you.’”
Paul Sieswerda, the founder of Gotham Whales, an organization that studies marine life in the New York Bight east of New Jersey and south of Long Island, said that the whale was indeed a humpback, seemingly a young and healthy one.
“It didn’t appear to be ailing,” he said, judging by the photos and videos he had seen.
Captain Field’s colleagues on the yacht Manhattan III, along with around two dozen guests, also spotted the whale while on an architectural tour.
Paul P. Murphy, a freelance reporter who has worked as a deckhand for the last six months, was one of the crew members on the Manhattan III.
Around noon, he said, the captain “called me up to the helm and was like, ‘Hey, I think I just saw that whale that we’ve heard about for the last 24 hours.’” They had received reports that a whale had been seen early Wednesday near Staten Island.
But Mr. Murphy recalled some advice from the captain: “If you ever see a dolphin or a whale, you should see it twice before you tell anybody else, because otherwise no one’s going to believe you.”
They did see it again. “That’s when he’s like, ‘All right, we see it,’” Mr. Murphy said. They spent about 30 minutes admiring the humpback gliding through the waters, he said, and even glimpsed a tail flip.
“It was really cool to see,” he said, noting how the whale had “the very characteristic blue and speckled white” coloring that humpbacks are known for.
It is unclear what drew the whale to the Hudson River on this particularly rainy and dreary day, but Captain Field said that she had also spotted in the river a dark cloud of menhaden, a small silvery fish that humpbacks like to eat.
Around 3 p.m., Erich Della Volpe, 27, looked out the window of his office building near Brookfield Place along the southwestern edge of Manhattan and was stunned to spot a whale in the Hudson. He took out his phone and captured the whale just as it began breaching, thrusting itself out of the water and producing a giant spray as it landed on its back.
In late November of 2016, a whale nicknamed Gotham took up residence in the Hudson, to the delight of riverside dwellers. There were also sightings in 2009 and 1988.
But what was once a rarity in the area has become more common, probably because the local waterways have become a rich source of food, experts said.
Ron DiGiovanni, chief scientist at the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society, said that the whale was most likely feeding in the Hudson. The migratory route of humpbacks in the area runs along the south shore of Long Island, he said, and their feeding typically begins in the spring and can last through fall as they blubber up for a winter journey to the warmer waters of the Caribbean, where they give birth.
“For many years, we didn’t see whales that readily,” he said. “Now, in the last 10 years, we’ve always seen whales or dolphins of some sort.”
Maxine Montello, executive director of the New York Marine Rescue Center, said that these more frequent sightings were a sign of the health of the Hudson River itself, after decades of cleanup efforts.
Both she and Mr. DiGiovanni cautioned New Yorkers to give the whales the space they need and to report any sightings to their organizations so they could send out notices to help keep the whales safe.
“These animals are federally protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act,” Ms. Montello said, “so getting too close to them could lead to fines and charges.” She added that officials could sometimes implement speed restrictions if whales were spotted in areas with large numbers of recreational or commercial vessels.
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