The Marine Mammal Stranding Center conducted a necropsy on a 20-foot minke whale that came into Barnegat Bay over the weekend.<\/p>\n
The necropsy found that the female whale was in overall thin condition. \u201cSuperficial cuts were present externally, with bruising present in the blubber and muscle in the areas of trauma on the dorsal side. Blood was present in the lungs,\u201d officials wrote in a statement.<\/p>\n
They also said that the whale\u2019s GI tract was empty \u201cwith very little digestive material present\u2026Lesions were present in the stomach.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other biological samples were taken and will be sent to a pathologist for more analysis.<\/p>\n
Video obtained by News 12 shows the whale thrashing and interacting with a pontoon boat before encountering a second boat, which resulted in one person going overboard.<\/p>\n
New Jersey State Police say the whale charged at the vessel on Saturday. No one was hurt, but the whale did not survive.<\/p>\n
Video taken from Miss Erin Fishing Charters shows the minke thrashing about after it entered the inlet. It\u2019s then seen interacting with a pontoon boat. It happened at least an hour before the second encounter.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a sad and difficult situation for anybody in the marine mammal field,\u201d said Dr. Danielle Brown, a leading expert on whale behavior in New Jersey and head researcher for Gotham Whale, and the Jersey Shore Whale Watch boat tours in Belmar.<\/p>\n
\u201cNecropsies are super important in this case. One, minke whales are under an unusual mortality event, so this is not the first instance stranding in this area. We want to learn why this is happening, why this is going on,\u201d said Brown.<\/p>\n
News 12 showed the new video to Jersey Girl Capt. Charlie Van Der Lynde and Jersey Shore Whale Watch owner Bill McKim.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe boater probably didn\u2019t do the greatest thing by being too close to it, but it was a sick whale and probably wasn\u2019t going to make it,\u201d said McKim.<\/p>\n
McKim\u2019s Jersey Shore Whale Watch follows federal guidelines, which means people must stay at least 100 feet away from whales. But if a whale comes toward a boat, McKim says to take the boat our of gear, shut the motor off and wait for the whale to leave the area.<\/p>\n
The entire incident is still under investigation by the New Jersey State Police.<\/p>\n
Those who see a whale in a bay or acting unusually are asked to call the Marine Mammal Stranding Center at 609-266-0538<\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Marine Mammal Stranding Center conducted a necropsy on a 20-foot minke whale that came into Barnegat Bay…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":120072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[74744,8931,159,67,132,68,31918,837],"class_list":{"0":"post-120071","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-barnegat-bay","9":"tag-jersey-shore","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us","14":"tag-whale","15":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114974514435932064","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}