A necropsy of a whale that washed ashore on New Jersey’s Long Beach Island revealed that the animal had suffered quite a few blunt force injuries, including a fractured skull and vertebrae.
The Marine Mammal Stranding Center released observations Friday from a necropsy conducted Thursday evening on the nearly 25-foot (7.6-meter) young male humpback whale found dead in Long Beach Township.
Sheila Dean, director of the middle, said the whale had bruises on its head; multiple fractures of the skull and cervical vertebrae; quite a few dislocated ribs and a dislocated shoulder bone.
“These injuries are consistent with blunt force trauma,” she wrote in a post on the group’s Facebook page.
When contacted later, Dean wouldn’t attribute the injuries to a selected cause, declaring that extensive testing would still should be performed as a part of the autopsy and tissue samples would should be sent to laboratories across the country.
“We just report what we see,” she said.
The animal’s reason behind death is of great interest to many due to an ongoing controversy by which opponents of offshore wind power imagine site preparation work for the projects is harming or killing whales along the U.S. East Coast.
Numerous scientific agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; the Marine Mammal Commission; the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, say there isn’t any evidence Link between offshore wind turbine preparation and whale deaths.
NOAA said Friday that there have been 16 large whale deaths on the East Coast in 2024: 7 humpbacks between Massachusetts and North Carolina; 4 North Atlantic right whales critically endangered 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.
There were 82 large whale deaths along the East Coast in 2023, the agency said.
The stranding center’s website said this was the primary whale kill of the yr in New Jersey, following 14 in 2023.
Leading Light Wind is certainly one of three planned wind farms off the coast of New Jersey. A press release released late Thursday said that “our community should be wary of misinformation campaigns in response to these incidents,” noting that most of the previous whale deaths have been attributed by scientists to vessel collisions or entanglements with fishing gear.
Protect Our Coast NJ, one of the staunchly anti-offshore wind groups, expressed renewed skepticism about official pronouncements on whale deaths, citing similar distrust amongst some officials regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Attributing all whale deaths to entanglements and ship strikes is reminiscent of the phenomenon four years ago in which seemingly every death was a COVID death, regardless of how old or how sick the patient was before contracting the virus.” the group said in an announcement on Thursday.
Leading Light, whose project will probably be built about 40 miles (64 kilometers) off Long Beach Island, said it’s committed to constructing the project in a way that minimizes risks to wildlife.
“Minimizing impacts on the marine environment is of paramount importance to Leading Light Wind,” project leaders said. “In addition to providing advance notice of our survey activities 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.”
The whale’s necropsy also revealed evidence that it had turn into entangled in fishing gear previously, although none were present when the whale washed ashore. Scars from a previous entanglement unrelated to the stranding event were found across the peduncle, the muscular area where the tail connects to the body. on the tail itself and on the correct front pectoral fin.
