Researchers with the New England Aquarium were conducting a regular survey of the waters south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket in Massachusetts last week when something caught their eye. What they spotted, a whale without a dorsal fin, led the researchers to think that it might be a North Atlantic right whale, a critically endangered species that the aquarium has been closely monitoring. But the whale’s skin was blotchy, and if it were a right whale, something would have been wrong. “I kind of had a weird feeling about it,” Orla O’Brien, an associate research scientist, said in an interview. “Something didn’t seem right.”So when the whale resurfaced and Ms. O’Brien and her observation partner, Kate Laemmle, a research technician, were able to see its distinctly shaped head and mottled gray and white skin, they could not believe their eyes: Could it be a gray whale?

---

Persons: ” Orla O’Brien, O’Brien, Kate Laemmle Organizations: New England Aquarium Locations: Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Massachusetts, Atlantic