You’d think a whale would be hard to miss.
But for decades, scientists didn’t realize that one of the rarest whales on Earth was living in the Gulf of Mexico just offshore of the Florida Panhandle.
“This extremely rare whale lives pretty much 60 miles due south of Pensacola,” said Laura Engleby, who recently retired from NOAA Fisheries after serving as chief of the Marine Mammal Branch for the agency’s Southeast Region. “So it is right in our backyard.”…