Whales and dolphins are people too

Whales and dolphins, once hunted to the brink of extinction, are now some of the most iconic migratory species to frequent our waters. When the recently deceased mammals are found at sea, they are often floating on top of the water. Pockets under the skin begin to fill with gasses of decay, until the carcass sinks into the abyss or washes ashore. Over the past few years, an alarming number of Humpback Whales have washed up on the beaches of the East Coast.

On June 29^th 2015, a deceased mature Humpback was discovered on the beach near Davis Park, New York, close to my hometown. The appearance of a whale was a strange sight in the small community. I was on the scene reporting for the Fire Island News at the time and spoke to Rachel Bosworth, a researcher from The Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research. On July 1^st her team began the necropsy of the beached whale. It revealed that a shattered skull and blunt force trauma were the cause of death. The juvenile male Humpback was 28 feet long.

The Riverhead Foundation found enough evidence to conclude that the whale was hit by a ship. According to Rachel, “this is a fairly common occurrence.” When an animal gets to be upwards of thirty feet long, boats are bound to hit them. It is unclear if the owner of the boat realized that he had killed the whale, or if he simply neglected to report it. Bosworth said that although it isn’t publicized, law enforcement and research laboratories are both trained with how to respond to a dead animal in sea traffic lanes. This past summer, I watched police officers in my town attempt to deal with a dead dolphin that was found washed ashore. 

I was the first person to stumble across the Bottlenose Dolphin who had found himself beached and in direct sunlight on a hot August afternoon. Compounded with what appeared to be propeller marks on the dorsal fin, the animal’s struggle proved to be too much. Exhaustion quickly set in, and by the time officers responded an hour later, as the animal was very, very dead.

I watched on as a handful of officers and lifeguards tried to lift the ten foot long, 1,100 pound carcass into the trunk of a Suffolk Country Police SUV by hand. Their efforts were futile, and it took another hour for them to come up with an appropriate solution. A crowd of people watched in horror as the officers tied one end of rope around the Dolphin’s tail, and the other one to the hitch of their SCPD SUV. They proceeded to drag the dolphin’s body behind the car for six miles, until they disposed of it at a nearby Coast Guard Station. To this day, we are unsure of the dolphin’s official cause of death. Since no official necropsy was conducted, that information was lost.

I witnessed a second beached juvenile Humpback Whale in December. It was a little further east than the whale found in Davis Park, and was said to have died of starvation. Some theorize that many of the whales and dolphins that have washed up over the course of this past year had already died of starvation when hit by boats. Even though there is a lot of necropsy evidence that refutes this theory, researchers have already begun looking into both schools of thought. The increased volume of dead mammals serves as an indicator that we must change something. It is a shame to have such majestic creatures dropping like flies.

Lawmakers are already in the process of implement tighter boating regulations in New York. The Riverhead Foundation is using recently acquired funding to investigate a possible shortage of krill and small schooling fish, two staples of the Humpback whale diet. As we move forward and our world gets further developed, it will become increasingly both more important and more difficult to conserve and preserve our sea creatures.