Video captures rare whale shark sighting off New York City coast

We want to show you this, because this is fun. This is fun. A rare sighting in New York waters. A whale shark. Believe it or not, a whale shark. Spotted about a hundred miles southeast of the city. Look at that thing. The encounter happened Monday during an offshore bird and whale watching trip aboard American Princess Cruises headed to Hudson Canyon. See, here's the thing, whale shark eggs are tropical and highly migratory animals. But before I talk any more about the science stuff that I looked up on Google before I get to him, I want to just talk to Chris St. Lawrence, because he's a naturalist with American Princess Cruises and also handles communication and outreach with Gotham Whale. Chris, good morning to you. Good morning. How are you? I'm doing great. You know, just in the commercial break we were talking, I feel like whales, sharks, jellyfish, I feel like marine life has been an unexpected surprise kind of celebrity of the summer. I feel like every week we're getting these sightings and just different things that we haven't seen before. What do you think? I think they're finally getting their due. You know, New York has so much amazing wildlife and I'm glad to finally see them taking the spotlight this summer. Okay, so let's talk about, in particular, about this sighting. We're talking 100 miles southeast of the city and this is a whale shark in the waters off New York. So can you just put that in perspective? How rare is that? How unusual? And how far away is that? That's a pretty good distance away from the city, right? Yeah, I mean, you know, it's a long ride, that's for sure. It depends on how fast your boat goes. These are, for us, a 24-hour trip, so we leave at 8 p.m. on Sunday night, we come back at 8 p.m. on Monday night, so we can spend enough time out in the canyon looking for rare sightings like this. I like to explain this as a rare sighting, but it's not unexpected. Out there, that's where the Gulf Stream comes in, so that warm water for further south, which encourages a lot of these tropical species to spend more time in New York waters. And so we know whale sharks are kind of expected in that Gulf Stream water, but they are still a really rare sighting for us from a boat because they spend their whole lives underwater, they don't need to come to the surface to breathe. And then also it's so hard to get out there, so we're not looking very often. And can we, Allison, bring up the shot of the shark again? So I guess it's a whale shark, I shouldn't say that it's a shark, but let's bring that video up just again real quick. And so can we pause it here? Can you just stop it? Okay, so let's stop it real quick. It's okay, so now we got a good look at it, because it was up, it came in and out fast, and you say they don't normally sort of come to the surface like this, but can you take me to that moment? I mean, when did you realize what you were looking at here? Well, so I was actually at the back of the boat looking through sargassum weed, which is a kind of plant that floats around out in their warm water out there, and there's a few different fish that we look for in that. And that was when somebody from the side of the boat started shouting out whale sharks, so everybody comes running to the corner, and you can hear some of the reactions in that video of everybody freaking out. And I had spent all night actually telling people that a whale shark was exactly what I was hoping to see that day, and so this was me manifesting that whale shark right next to the boat. That's so special. That's funny. And tell us a little bit about a whale shark. I mean, you say it's not unexpected that we would see it there, but I mean, this is something that a lot of people typically, you know, it's not the ones that we usually get the drone footage of, like the bull sharks and all that kind of stuff that's a little closer inland. Yeah, so these guys are the biggest fish in the ocean. They're filter feeders, so they are harmless to people. They eat small fish, small shrimp, things like that. And they're highly migratory, so they're more associated with tropical waters further south, but they can follow that Gulf Stream current further north, ranging in the late summer into the fall, kind of all the way up into New England, actually. Again, those far offshore areas where the Gulf Stream is strongest. Actually, where we saw this shark, the water temperature was 81 degrees, which is a little much warmer than we see closer to shore here. Just as we kind of wrap up here, I know part of this is really good news because it means that even that's far out, maybe our waters are cleaner and they feel comfortable to come to this area because there is this sort of plentiful amount of food, especially when you talk about inland. That's the water is warming. Does that sort of indicate that there is a changing in the climate and changing in the water temperature that we're starting to see this thing more and more often? Yeah, I mean, again, this is something where we need to collect more data to build that data set to understand if there are more of these animals coming to the area. With warmer water that lasts longer into the season, we could see these animals staying for longer periods of time further north, but as of right now, we don't really know. Chris St. Lawrence, just in case anyone is just joining us, you are with American Princess Cruises, which I'm guessing is what that was. That's the Princess Cruises that sort of goes out the 24-hour trip, and you also handle communications and outreach for Gotham Whale. I know you reached out to us wanting to make sure that you got this on our radar. Anything else you want us to know, protecting the waters and animals off our coast, anything along those lines? So where we actually saw this whale shark out near the Hudson Canyon, that area is currently undergoing the designation process to become a National Marine Sanctuary, so actually a Marine National Park, to protect the wildlife like whale sharks that depend on it. So if you Google that, you can find the ways to help support the Hudson Canyon and animals just like this one. See the Hudson, I'm always learning something about the city, like Hudson Canyon, I didn't know that was, is that like the eighth borough? I'm going to put that down as the eighth borough. Just get out there and, you know, take a cruise with Chris and his folks. Chris, man, thank you so much. This is great. One last look at this whale shark. Can we do it? Can we do it? Because it's fast. It's a fast one, in and out, and the largest fish in the ocean. Who knew? We all learned something new today. Chris, thank you, man, appreciate you. Thank you. All right, everybody, check out American Princess Cruises and Gotham Whale, I mean the Hudson Canyon, now you know.