Dead Whale Floating Off Seaside Heights

Updated, 11:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 1

SEASIDE PARK, NJ — Authorities were continuing to monitor the body of a whale that was seen floating off Seaside Heights and Seaside Park on Wednesday afternoon.

The whale's carcass had not washed ashore as of 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, and a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter was seen overhead during a visit to the beach by a Patch reporter.

Officials with the Marine Mammal Stranding Center said they were notified at 11:04 a.m. about the whale's body, which at that time was about a half-mile off Seaside Park.

"Through drone footage the carcass was identified as a humpback whale," center officials said. The Coast Guard had provided a drift analysis, looking at the whale's possible drift path along the coast.

"The Marine Mammal Stranding Center and NOAA are monitoring the situation, and coordinating the response for when the carcass comes ashore," the center said.

After the initial sighting, officials were not sure whether the whale was the same one seen floating near Ambrose Channel on Monday, but in an update at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, staff with Clean Ocean Action said a determination had been made that the Ambrose Channel whale was not the same one floating off Seaside Park.

"We will provide updates on that whale soon," the update on the Clean Ocean Action Facebook page said, referring to the Ambrose Channel whale.

They are the latest in a series of dead whales that have been seen or have washed up on New Jersey beaches since December.

Ryan Mack of Jersey Shore Fire Response, who took drone photos of the Seaside Park whale, said he heard about it from local residents who saw it about 10 a.m.

"My drone was around 4,500 feet off the coast," he said, and he was off N Street in Seaside Park when he was taking the photos about 12:30 p.m.

The appearance of the whales sparked another round of calls for a moratorium on activities related to offshore wind projects off the New Jersey coast, which are still in preliminary stages of development.

Calls for a moratorium have been persistent since mid-February, when the Feb. 13 beaching of a juvenile humpback in Manasquan — the ninth whale at that point to wash up in New Jersey and New York since Dec. 5 — prompted a rally on the boardwalk in Point Pleasant Beach. Read more: Offshore Wind Moratorium Urged At Save The Whales Rally

Rep. Chris Smith of the 4th District, who represents northern Ocean County shore towns and into lower Monmouth County, and Rep. Jeff Van Drew of the 2nd District, who represents southern Ocean County down to Cape May, have sponsored a House of Representatives bill to force a moratorium until an investigation into the whale deaths and potential connection to offshore wind projects is conducted.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been monitoring an increase in the number of humpback whale deaths since 2016, in what NOAA has labeled an "Unusual Mortality Event."

NOAA officials say a portion of the deaths are attributable to ship strikes and fishing gear entanglement, but it has not be able to determine whether that is the predominant cause.

The Marine Mammal Stranding Center performs the necropsies and takes tissue samples that are submitted for additional examination and pathology. In the Wednesday afternoon update, center officials said final pathology results from the whale necropsies submitted so far have not yet been received.

"In fact, we are still waiting for pathology results from animals that stranded last summer," center officials said. "We have been transparent with the information we know from the preliminary necropsy results, however we are at the mercy of the time it takes for final pathology results to be completed."

The Manasquan humpback had internal damage that showed it had been hit by a ship, the center said in a Feb. 15 update.

The federal Marine Mammal Commission, which is tasked with protecting marine mammals — including whales — said in a Feb. 21 statement that it is monitoring the situation and the Unusual Mortality Event declared by the National Marine Fisheries Service, and ship strikes or fishing gear entanglement accounted for about 40 percent of the deaths where dead whales had been examined.

Not every dead whale is able to be necropsied. Some wash up in locations that are inaccessible to the heavy equipment necessary to move the body for a necropy, and some whales found floating never wash ashore, authorities have said.

"Although these strandings have generated media interest and public scrutiny, humpback whale strandings are not new nor are they unique to the U.S. Atlantic coast," the commission said in the Feb. 21 statement. "In fact, ten or more humpback whales have stranded each year during the UME, with a high of 34 in 2017. As the Gulf of Maine stock of humpback whales continues to grow, more young animals are choosing to overwinter along the Atlantic coast where they are vulnerable to being struck by ships and becoming entangled in fishing gear."

Lauren Gaches, public affairs director for the NOAA Fisheries, said during a conference call with reporters in late January that there have been reports of increased amounts of small bait fish closer to shore this winter.

In addition, there have been more whales seen in the area, including the Ambrose Channel, which is the primary route for large container ships, cruise ships and other boat traffic into and out of the Port of New York and New Jersey. Hundreds of ships pass through the channel, which runs through the middle of Raritan Bay out to the Atlantic past Sandy Hook and southern Long Island, each year.

"More whales in the water and areas traveled by boats of all sizes increases the risk of vessel strikes," Gaches said.

Officials with the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said the surveying being conducted does not involve the seismic sonar testing that was used in 2014 for potential offshore oil drilling. Instead, the site surveying being done currently involves equipment that produces "a very narrow cone of sound."

"For example, multi-beam echo sounders have only about a 2-degree beam width," said Erica Staaterman, a bioacoustician with the bureau's Center for Marine Acoustics. "They're very narrow, and that means that the likelihood of an animal encountering and coming right into that sound beam is quite low."

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