ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — A 30-foot juvenile humpback whale washed up on the beach in Atlantic City on Saturday morning, the second time in 15 days a young whale has been swept ashore in the casino town.
This time, officials with the Marine Mammal Stranding Center decided not to bury the whale immediately, as they did on Dec. 23, when a similar-looking baby humpback whale washed ashore near Tropicana.
Sheila Dean, executive director of the Stranding Center, said on Saturday this whale had only recently died, and that a full necropsy would yield valuable information. The whale was rolled up past the high-tide lines by a large bulldozer, as its bloated insides popped and squirted, but did not, as officials had warned gawkers, explode.
Atlantic City’s fire, emergency, and police departments prepared for a long night of keeping people away from the creature until Sunday morning. A small crowd had gathered to take pictures and video, even as police urged them to back up to avoid being in the path of any whale insides.
“We don’t want anybody touching it,” said Battalion Chief Michael Famularo, the deputy emergency management director for Atlantic City.
It was a scene described by onlookers as both magical, at least at first, seeing evidence that such a wondrous and large creature lives in Jersey Shore waters, and tragic, with the sad fate of the whale a literal deflating reality.
“It’s sad,” said Daryl Bulthuis, a nearby resident whose son, John Bulthuis, discovered the whale early Saturday at high tide. “But even though it is sad, it is a part of nature. People speculate on different things that might have happened, like it was the sonar from the wind farms. I like to dwell on that they migrate through here. This was kind of a late migration, and some of them don’t make it.”
A handful of protesters from the Protect Our Coast group that opposes the plans to build massive wind turbine farms off the coast also came out. One, Jim D’Allesandro, held a sign that said, “Stop wind turbines, stop killing whales.”
He noted that it was the fourth whale to wash up in recent months, including one in Wildwood and another in Strathmere.
As people gathered to take photos and videos, Dean and another person from the Marine Mammal Stranding Center used a long knife to take samples from the carcass, and determined that the whale had only recently died, she said. Rather than bury right away, she said necropsy teams would be brought in Sunday.
After that, the whale, like the Dec. 23 one, would be buried right on the beach. “You can’t tow something that big away,” she said. “You can’t take it out to sea because it’s a navigation hazard.”
“It’s pretty sad,” said John Bulthuis. “Two whales in a short time. It’s a bummer.”
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