Less is known about the impact of ship traffic on whales in New York than in the Boston area, where there has been a real-time underwater acoustic monitoring system in place since 2008. “New York needs to get up to speed now and collect the kind of baseline data that will help government and the shipping industry minimize human impacts on whales,” Dr. Rosenbaum, a marine biologist, said.

The fortunes of the New York region were once intimately linked to whales. Small-scale whaling on Long Island dates to the 1640s; the blubber of the right whale was used for lamp oil and to make soap and margarine.

Many species were brought to the brink of local extinction as a result of a whaling boom in the mid-19th century. As coastal whale populations crashed, Long Island whalers ventured farther afield — into the Arctic and to Hawaii — until ultimately the industry moved in the late 19th century to San Francisco.

Demand for whale oil plummeted with the development of kerosene. But the market for whale meat remained strong even into the 1960s. Whale populations were decimated by industrial-scale slaughter fueled by the use of exploding harpoons in the 20th century.

That all began to change after the International Whaling Commission banned hunting in 1986. Critically endangered species, like the North Atlantic right whale, began to see modest increases in population. Still, there are only an estimated 500 right whales in the North Atlantic today, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In fact, all of New York’s whale species are listed as endangered, and human activity continues to have a lot to do with that status. Kimberly Durham, the rescue program director of the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation on Long Island, reports that 2015 was the worst year yet for whale mortality in the area. “Nine dead whales, mostly humpbacks, washed up on Long Island beaches,” she said, “almost double the number in our previous peak year of 1991.” Most of the carcasses had wounds consistent with ship strikes.

One unlucky humpback, Ms. Durham said, was found entangled in gillnetting, which is often deployed to catch squid and herring.