LONG BEACH COUNTY, NJ – A post-mortem examination of a whale that washed ashore on New Jersey’s Long Beach Island found that the animal had suffered multiple blunt force injuries, including a fractured skull and vertebrae.
The Marine Mammal Stranding Center on Friday released observations from a necropsy performed Thursday night on the nearly 25-foot (7.6-meter) juvenile male humpback whale that was found dead in Long Beach Township.
Sheila Dean, director of the center, said the whale had bruises on its head; multiple fractures of the skull and cervical vertebrae; numerous dislocated ribs and a dislocated shoulder bone.
“These injuries are consistent with blunt trauma,” she wrote in a post on the group’s Facebook page.
Contacted later, Dean did not attribute the injuries to any specific cause, noting that extensive testing remains to be done as part of the autopsy, with tissue samples sent to laboratories across the country.
“We just report what we see,” she said.
The cause of the animal’s death is of intense interest to many amid an ongoing controversy involving offshore wind opponents’ belief that site preparation work for the projects is harming or killing whales along the east coast of the United States. USA.
Numerous scientific agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; the Marine Mammal Commission; the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection say there is no evidence linking offshore wind energy preparedness to whale deaths.
NOAA said Friday there have been 16 major whale kills on the East Coast in 2024: 7 humpbacks between Massachusetts and North Carolina; 4 critically endangered North Atlantic right whales in Massachusetts, Virginia and Georgia; two sperm whales in South Carolina and Florida; two minke whales in North Carolina and Virginia and a fin whale in Rhode Island.
The stranding center’s website said this was New Jersey’s first whale death of the year, following 14 in 2023.
Leading Light Wind is one of three proposed wind farms off the New Jersey coast. It said in a statement released Thursday that “our community must protect itself against disinformation campaigns in response to these incidents,” noting that many of the previous whale deaths have been attributed by scientists to collisions with ships or entanglement in fishing gear. fishing.
Protect Our Coast NJ, one of the most staunchly anti-offshore wind groups, expressed renewed skepticism regarding official pronouncements on whale deaths, citing similar distrust in some quarters of official information about the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Blaming all cetacean deaths on entanglements and ship strikes is reminiscent of the phenomenon of four years ago, in which seemingly every death was a COVID death, no matter how old or how sick the patient was before contract the virus,” the group said. in a statement Thursday.
Leading Light, whose project would be built about 40 miles off Long Beach Island, said it is committed to building the project in a way that minimizes risks to wildlife.
“Minimizing impacts on the marine environment is of utmost importance to Leading Light Wind,” said project leaders. “In addition to providing advance notice of our research activity and facilitating active engagement with maritime stakeholders, Leading Light Wind is investing in monitoring and mitigation initiatives to ensure the offshore wind industry can thrive alongside a healthy marine environment. ”.
Post-mortem examination of the whale also showed evidence of previous entanglement with fishing gear, although nothing was present when the whale came ashore. Scars from previous entanglement unrelated to the stranding were found around the peduncle, which is the muscular area where the tail connects to the body; on the tail itself and on the right front pectoral fin.
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