Blue Whales Ply the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts; Industry Could Soon Too
The first-ever sightings of the earth’s largest animals in these waters come as the Trump administration opens the marine national monument to destructive commercial fishing.
Weighing in at up to 200 tons and measuring around 100 feet long, the blue whale is the biggest animal ever to have existed on this planet. Which is why it’s kind of bonkers that these endangered behemoths can still drop in on us for a surprise visit.
In late February of this year, researchers with the New England Aquarium spotted a blue whale cruising through the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. The monument lies about 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and is the only section of the Atlantic Ocean that’s protected as a monument by our federal government. Here, the relatively shallow waters of the continental shelf suddenly plunge into the depths of the North Atlantic. It’s also a stretch of sea where blue whales are very rarely seen.
Then, the very next day, the researchers saw two more blue whales within spitting distance of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. This was another first, as such sightings more typically occur much farther north in Canadian waters.
“You know, it’s like they say: ‘If you build it, they will come,’” says Michael Jasny, director of the NRDC Marine Mammal Protection Project, doing his best Field of Dreams impression. “When you protect areas of the ocean by limiting or restricting fishing and you keep out other human activities, like oil and gas development, you create conditions for wildlife to flourish.”
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The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument is one of those places that Jasny refers to as “oases for life.” Established in 2016, the monument encompasses nearly 5,000 square miles and contains what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) describes as “fragile and largely pristine deep marine ecosystems and rich biodiversity.”
And yet, just over a month after these first-of-their-kind blue whale sightings, NOAA rescinded regulations that prohibited commercial fishing within the monument’s boundaries. The agency’s decision followed President Trump’s executive proclamation in February to “unleash commercial fishing in the Atlantic.” But would opening the national monument really buoy U.S. fishers?
“No,” says Brad Sewell, the managing director of NRDC’s Oceans program, explaining that these particular waters don’t even hold significant importance to the industry.
“You know, 99 percent of the U.S. Atlantic is open to commercial fishing,” he adds. “So having these really special, iconic places remain closed permanently—so that they can recover and serve as refuges from the hostile world around them, providing climate resilience and ecological recovery and replenishment—is a really special thing.”
Opening the monument to industrial fishing is also illegal. This is why, earlier this week, several environmental groups, including NRDC, along with the owner of a whale-watching business, challenged the Trump administration in court.
Why is the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument so important?
While its name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue like Yellowstone or Yosemite, the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument is just as impressive as those other national treasures. And while the monument’s steep canyons, extinct volcanos (seamounts), hydrothermal vents, and troves of wildlife lie hidden within the Atlantic, they are just as vital to the health of surrounding ecosystems and the planet as a whole.
Take, for example, the monument’s three protected canyons: Oceanographer, Gilbert, and Lydonia (where the first blue whale was spotted). These gorges, which are deeper than the Grand Canyon, may seem as out of sight, out of mind as it gets, but they aid in feeding sea life big and small, from the surface to all the way down.
The ocean’s deepest, darkest areas are far from wastelands that are too extreme for life. In fact, they help support life everywhere. This is because nutrients accumulate on the seafloor after living things die and sink into the abyss. Meanwhile, winds and tides churn the surface, creating a vacuum that water from the deep rushes in to fill. Especially pronounced at places like seamount and canyon walls, the upwellings bring nitrates and phosphates closer to the surface, exposing them to sunlight, which fuels the growth of phytoplankton. These tiny, plant-like organisms are the very foundation of the oceanic food web. As it happens, phytoplankton are a favorite food of krill, which are the small, shrimp-like critters that blue whales love to eat.
Life deep in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts, including (clockwise from top left) a community of corals and sponges on Retriever Seamount, feather star crinoids and bamboo coral on Mytilus Seamount; a Corallium pink coral on Retriever Seamount, and a warty octopus on Bear Seamount
“These canyons make really good feeding grounds for whales and many other species,” says Jasny. “And so it may very well be that these ocean giants, in their hunt for some of the smallest foods that could be on the menu, were attracted to the remarkable oasis that the monument has created.”
The massive gorges—along with four seamounts, part of a chain of more than 30 extinct, underwater volcanoes that stretch out toward Bermuda—are also prime shark territory. Great whites hunt here, as do imperiled scalloped hammerheads. Enormous endangered whale sharks come to dine on plankton, along with the krill and small fish that the plankton also feed. Endangered leatherback and threatened loggerhead sea turtles swing by during migration, and schools of tuna and billfish also tear through these seas, as gulls, shearwaters, storm petrels, gannets, skuas, terns, and even Atlantic puffins dive in for a snack from the skies above.
And that’s just what’s happening near the surface. In recent years, deep-sea submersibles have revealed that along the canyon and seamount walls cling colorful colonies of sponges, anemones, and at least 58 species of deep-sea coral. Despite the lack of sunlight and immense water pressure, some of these rare corals can thrive at depths of 12,800 feet (3,900 meters)—or the equivalent of just below the final resting place of the RMS Titanic.
Among the monument’s other mysterious inhabitants are rarely seen beaked whales, which can dive deeper than any other mammal. Scientists have described three new species of these cetaceans in as many decades, and such discoveries—of animals the size of small elephants!—speak to how much there is to learn about deep-sea environments. “The monument has high densities of multiple species of beaked whales,” says Jasny, “making that area a wonderful place to study these fantastic, enigmatic animals.”
How would commercial fishing harm the monument?
To better understand the effect of the Trump administration’s opening of the monument to commercial fishing, let’s clarify what “fishing” is in this context.
To allow commercial fishing means to permit boats to prowl the monument’s waters, where their gear can be highly indiscriminate and pose a threat to all sorts of wildlife that can get caught accidentally, known as bycatch, or become entangled in thick fishing lines. A 2021 analysis on the impact of commercial fishing in the monument suggests this fate could befall many protected species, such as pilot whales, Risso’s dolphins, and endangered fin whales.
Commercial fishing gear includes longlines that can stretch 30 miles in length, dragging thousands of hooks, heavy traps and pots, and giant nets armed with chains and held open by metal planks that can weigh several tons. When the latter scrape across the seafloor, a practice called bottom trawling, they raze everything in their path. This leaves a barren, scarred moonscape that can take decades to recover—or much longer, considering that some deep-sea corals can live thousands of years.
An animated tour of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts
The fight for Northeast Canyons and Seamounts
At the creation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument a decade ago, an NRDC report detailed just how little fishing activity actually took place there. A single lobsterman had been fishing in the area full-time, for instance, and less than 1 percent of the annual squid, butterfish, mackerel, and whiting fisheries came from the monument area.
Nonetheless, this is the second time that President Trump has opened the monument to fishing—the first time, in 2020. And when President Joe Biden closed it again the following year, there was, again, little to no impact on the fishing industry. A 2022 study published in the journal Scientific Reports looked at catch reports and travel logs of fishing vessels and found that neither total catch nor pounds of landed fish declined for squid, mackerel, tuna, or swordfish. The fishing boats also did not have to venture farther to reach their hauls.
What’s more, even in the 16 months during which the monument was open, nearly all fishing activity took place outside of its boundaries. So the promise of the current administration that its opening of the monument will bolster American fishing communities is dubious.
As for the blue whales and their future in these waters, the sightings of the giants in new places are huge signs that though the ocean is vast, its communities are more interconnected than we may realize from the shore. And the more we can do to protect each link in that chain, the better.
“There’s a reason why, as children, we were all enthralled by whales,” says Jasny. “They put us in touch with what is grandest and most transcendent in the natural world. And they remind us, as adults, how important nature is.”
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