More menhaden in New York waters means more whales, but also more collisions with ships. Plus, the Manhattan district attorney tosses hundreds of old convictions.
Good morning. We’ll look at what might have been behind the deaths of two more humpback whales off New York and New Jersey. We’ll also see why several hundred convictions are being thrown out in Manhattan.
The Facebook post on the two whale deaths said the cause was “suspected blunt force trauma.”
They were the latest deaths in a troubling year: So far, 23 dead whales have been found from Maine to Florida in 2023, four more than in all of 2022. Twelve of them apparently died off New York and New Jersey, twice as many as in 2022.
The two most recent deaths occurred separately on Thursday. One of the whales, a 47-foot-long male, was buried on the beach at Hampton Bays, on Long Island. The other whale, a 28-foot female, was towed from Raritan Bay to the Gateway National Recreation Area in Sandy Hook, N.J. The post about them, from NOAA Fisheries New England-Mid-Atlantic, a unit of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said both had bruises, along with other injuries.
So what happened? Did they collide with ships? Paul Sieswerda, the executive director of Gotham Whale, a whale research and advocacy group in New York, said on Tuesday that it was probably the other way around. “Where and how they are struck is still a question,” he said.
Many humpbacks that wash up are juveniles, like some 93 percent of humpbacks struck by vessels in the New York Bight, according to research by four scientists from Stony Brook University and one from the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society on Long Island. And there is no question that the shipping lanes around New York are busy these days, Sieswerda said, so it is as if “they’re playing in traffic.”
Some marine experts say that online shopping has contributed to higher mortality by putting more whales in the path of more ships carrying products to the ports in New York and New Jersey. And the ships themselves are bigger than they once were. The ports in New Jersey became accessible to the world’s largest cargo ships in 2017, after the Bayonne Bridge was raised, increasing the clearance underneath.
More food, more trouble
The ship strikes seem to be a downside to what Frank Quevedo, the executive director of the South Fork Natural History Museum on Long Island, called a success story. There is more food in the waters off New York these days — specifically, Atlantic menhaden. They are “the most important fish in the ocean” because “everything feeds on them,” Quevedo said.
Whales, dolphins, sharks, ospreys and eagles all love menhaden, he said. So do striped bass. The menhaden population has grown, Quevedo said on Tuesday, because of a four-year-old state law that barred fisherman from using big nets to target schools of menhaden. The nets, some as large as six city blocks, were weighted down at the bottom and could be closed at the top, trapping the fish.
Banning the nets left more menhaden in the water, he said, attracting whales that hunger for them. Sieswerda added: “We used to like to say New York was a place to come to eat for fine food — and the whales felt the same way. But the risk has multiplied, sorry to say. It’s more dangerous for the whales now.”
Or, as Quevedo put it, the whales “are interacting with ships and boats, their larger propellers.”
“Once you get hit by a cargo ship or a commercial dragger,” he said, “it’s just like us, if we get hit by a car.”
Weather
Haze and smoke drifting our way from Canadian wildfires are expected to continue today but will probably vary in intensity. That means that air quality is likely to be near or at unhealthy levels, and it would be worth checking the air quality in your neighborhood before doing anything outdoors for long periods.
Beyond that, prepare for a chance of showers and temps near the mid-70s during the day. This evening will be partly cloudy, with temps dropping to the high 50s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until June 19 (Juneteenth).
The latest New York news
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Santos’s bail: A federal magistrate judge ruled against Representative George Santos’s request to keep private the identities of people who guaranteed his $500,000 bail bond last month.
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Trump defamation suit: Former President Donald Trump told a judge that he could not have defamed E. Jean Carroll by denying her decades-old rape accusation because a jury had found him liable only for sexually abusing her.
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Cannabis licenses: Although Gov. Kathy Hochul suggested last fall that more than 100 dispensaries would be operating by this summer, only 12 have opened.
Crime
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Cuba Gooding Jr. civil trial: Before a single witness could take the stand, the actor settled a federal lawsuit, scheduled to go to trial Tuesday, accusing him of rape. The deal averted a civil trial that would have examined the most serious allegations yet against Gooding.
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Security guard charged: A security guard who worked at a federal building in Manhattan has been accused of forcing an asylum seeker to perform oral sex on him, violating the migrant’s constitutional rights.
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OneTaste leaders indicted: The founder and a top officer of a San Francisco-based commune and sexual wellness company were indicted on charges of forced labor conspiracy by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn.
More than 300 cases are thrown out
First a group of the police officers, sergeants and detectives were convicted of crimes related to their work. Now hundreds of the cases they worked on are being thrown out.
The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, said in a statement that his office sought the dismissal of more than 300 convictions because of due process violations. The oldest dated to 1996, the most recent to 2017. The vast majority were misdemeanors, and they were thrown out on Tuesday in Manhattan Criminal Court. My colleague Hurubie Meko writes that two more misdemeanors, along with eight felonies, are expected to be tossed today in State Supreme Court in Manhattan.
Bragg, who has highlighted police accountability since taking office last year, said he continued to “prioritize investigating and clearing convictions that undermine trust in the criminal justice system.” Bragg’s office has been reviewing more than 1,100 cases brought by 22 former police officers who have been convicted of crimes.
Eight of the officers who brought the cases vacated on Tuesday have been convicted on charges like official misconduct, planting evidence, taking bribes and lying under oath. A ninth officer, Oscar Sandino, has been convicted of two counts of deprivation of civil rights, a federal misdemeanor, for coerced sexual misconduct against two women in custody.
Advocates have said that one challenge they face is informing everyone who has had a case vacated. Elizabeth Felber, the head of the wrongful conviction unit at the Legal Aid Society, said after a round of dismissals in November that someone at Legal Aid had been assigned to check databases for telephone numbers.
Felber said in a statement on Tuesday that she hoped that “this moment delivers some justice and closure” to the people whose lives were affected by the officers’ actions.
But she added: “The sad reality is that many were forced to suffer incarceration, hefty legal fees, loss of employment, housing instability, severed access to critical benefits and other collateral consequences.”
METROPOLITAN diary
Defying the jackhammer
Dear Diary:
I work in the voice-over industry, which shifted entirely to recording from home during the pandemic. I already had the quintessential New York City home studio: a closet, treated with foam and sound-dampening tiles, where I recorded countless auditions and jobs.
So I was prepared in 2020 when I landed a series of national television commercials that would run for months and into the holidays. It was a big deal.
I savored the news for a moment before the sound of Con Edison working outside reminded me that the gas lines were being replaced. My studio may be pin-drop quiet, but nothing defies the mighty jackhammer.
I whisked myself down to the street in search of a guy with a clipboard.
“Wondering your Monday schedule from 1-2 p.m.?” I shouted when I found him. “I’m a voice-over actor and I booked a commercial and … ”
“Monday, huh?” he shouted back, scanning the clipboard. “We have work planned that’s going to be pretty loud.”
My heart sank.
“But these are crazy times,” he said. “Let me see what I can do.”
When Monday morning arrived, Con Ed was loud at work. At the stroke of 1, though, the street fell totally silent. It stayed that way for an hour.
— Sarah Sweeney
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Melissa Guerrero, Jeffrey Furticella, Rick Martinez and Olivia Parker contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.
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More Fish, More Whales, More Ships — and More Whale Strikes - The New York Times
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