Wayward Gray Whale Is the First Seen in Atlantic Region in Centuries

There are about 20,000 gray whales living in the eastern Pacific Ocean today, plus another 200 in a small group in the western Pacific. And, in the Mediterranean Sea, scientists have found one. Over the weekend, oceanographers saw a solitary gray whale cruising the Mediterranean off the coast of Israel. To say they were surprised would be a vast understatement: gray whales haven't lived in the Atlantic Ocean or the Mediterranean since their population crashed in the 1700s, possibly because of whaling operations. Yet today a solitary gray whale swims by the shores near Tel Aviv, halfway across the world from where the rest of its species resides (the researchers say they photographed the animal to be sure it wasn't a different species, like sperm whale). So what happened to get this whale to the far side of the world? Says Phillip Clapham of the US government's National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle: