Photo: Kim Mancini // Facebook
A chaotic scene unfolded off the coast of New Jersey this weekend. As shocked witnesses looked on, a 26-foot minke whale fatally collided with a motorboat, throwing a passenger overboard and nearly capsizing the vessel.
According to a release by the Marine Mammal Stranding Center, they received a call from the NJ State Police Marine Unit at 2:45 p.m. Saturday August 2, reporting that a whale had been observed in Barnegat Bay near Long Beach Island, New Jersey. At 3:40 p.m., a vessel struck the whale, nearly capsizing and gravely injuring the animal.
Video recorded by onlookers shows a chaotic scene, with the collision nearly tipping the boat over and sending one passenger overboard, as the whale continue to thrash nearby. Other videos showed the whale violently thrashing in shallow water after the incident.
As the MMSC was en route to respond to the call, the whale died. The the center’s coordinator arrived to find its carcass resting on a shallow sandbar outside the channel. The whale was identified as a Minke, measuring in at 26 feet, four inches. When weather conditions allowed, the whale was towed to a nearby state park and necropsied.
“Preliminary necropsy findings indicate that the whale was in overall thin body condition,” read the report. “Superficial 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. The GI tract was empty with very little digestive material present, and a scant amount of fecal matter. Lesions were present in the stomach. At the conclusion of the necropsy, the whale was buried on the beach.”
