Humpback whale that washed ashore in New Jersey was previously struck by ship, officials say
By Zoe Sottile, CNN
A humpback whale that washed ashore off the coast of New Jersey was previously struck by a ship, according to officials.
The dead whale was first reported to officials on Monday, according to a news release from Monmouth County, New Jersey. It washed ashore at the Manasquan Inlet beach on the Jersey Shore.
The remains of the 35-foot juvenile female whale were moved to a county facility Tuesday for a necropsy, according to a statement emailed to CNN by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The necropsy revealed that the whale had previously been struck by a vessel, per NOAA. But the agency is still waiting on results of tissue analysis to determine whether the whale was struck before or after death.
The agency did not identify a cause of death for the whale and noted that “advanced decomposition” made it difficult to perform the necropsy. The whale’s remains were disposed of in a county landfill.
Humpback whales are categorized as “endangered” in the US under the Endangered Species Act. The cetaceans live in all the world’s oceans and often visit the coast of New Jersey to feed on schools of small fish, according to the Marine Mammal Stranding Center.
Over the past few years, an unusual string of humpback whale deaths has sparked concern among experts and officials. In 2017, NOAA declared an “unusual mortality event” among the species along the Atlantic Coast. So far in 2023, 10 humpbacks have been stranded along the coast, with five in New Jersey alone.
Necropsies were conducted on around half of the whales that were stranded since 2016, according to NOAA. Of these, around 40% revealed “evidence of human interaction, either ship strike or entanglement.”
The-CNN-Wire
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