As large whales – such as the sperm, humpback, gray, blue, and right – have started to slowly recover in recent years from centuries of overhunting, scientists are discovering that these large animals are very important to our oceans.

Over the last few decades, warming ocean temperatures have caused marine species to move to new places. They are leaving some places where temperatures have become too warm for them. And they are invading new places that have now become inhabitable due to increasing temperatures.  For example, on both sides of the North Atlantic (the U.S. northeast coast and western European coast), scientists have found that cod have shifted their distribution to higher latitudes, as have several other commercially valuable fish species. In these areas, fishermen are also starting to see more warmer-water fish, like black sea bass in the northeast U.S. and red mullet in northern Europe¹.

Safina points to gross negligence as the cause of the spill