Given the whale deaths along the Shore this winter, I thought I would look to history to find out if there ever was as large a washup of whales. The further back you go, there are fewer washups, although they were newsworthy standings in all generations. The early 1990s and the early 2000s were particularly busy. The Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine has tracked the recent past and there are an average of seven wash-ups in NJ over the past 20 years with 12 in 2019 and again in 2020. Since 2016 with over 180 humpback deaths in the Atlantic, NOAA has recognized an Unusual Mortality Event for the species which triggers a deeper study.
Boat strikes and fishing gear entanglement, represent about 40 percent of the deaths, leaving many deaths undetermined. Coastal mayors including Spring Lake’s have recently penned a letter to Congress asking them to examine the potential impact of offshore wind farms. “While we are not opposed to clean energy, we are concerned about the impacts these projects may already be having on our environment,” the letter reads. “We urge you to take action now to prevent future deaths from needlessly occurring on our shorelines." Boats in the Belmar Marina, home of fishing and whale-watching charters, boast “Save the Whales” signs. To date, NOAA has found no causality between whale deaths and offshore energy projects.
Whale sightings near shore in New Jersey were rare in the late 1800s.
Who could blame the poor whales for staying far from shore? Stories of whale sightings led to hunting parties who used any means to bring the whales to market, long after commercial whaling fleets had stopped hunting the coast. The brutal task of killing and then butchering whales brought large bounties for whale oil, bone, and other products. Calves were of little value but would often be killed with their mothers. Whales became mythical creatures out of the past.
In Atlantic City, in 1885 an old sea captain Sam Snee reacting to a rare near-shore capture of a whale mentioned seeing 20 young whales in 1876 but only one other, and that was “before the war”, meaning the Civil War. He was referencing a 43-footer that was taken near Lewes in the Delaware River in 1859. That same year, a 63-foot giant was stranded in the back end of Sandy Hook below the Twin Lights at the Highlands.
1907 beached whale is stripped of its blubber. Underwood and Underwood contribution to the Library of Congress
Is there good news here? Yes. Atlantic Humpback populations have risen to their highest numbers in living memory, from a low of 15,000 to 85.000 animals. There are over 1.5 million whales of all types in the Atlantic, some plentiful and some still endangered. Spring and Fall pods of baitfish bring them very close to shore, giving us all a glimpse of their majesty. Jersey Shore Whale Watch runs tours where they guarantee a sighting.
What has changed? Hunting whales was internationally banned in 1986. The management of national fisheries within a 200-mile limit has also allowed the baitfish to recover. The water is cleaner, as sewage and dumping controls were implimented.
Thar she blows! A large cow off Sea Girt Vincent Dicks Photo
This was all predicted in an article in the Hartford Post in 1879. It just has taken a long time to come true:
THE WHALE
Unless some new demand in the arts arises for the products of the whale, coming generations will notice a vast increase in the number of that gigantic antediluvian ocean mammal. The time was when, within the memory of those who have barely passed the meridian of life, the products of the whale fishery were indispensable to civilized needs. All the oil for lubricating machinery came from that source.
It was lately used in arts; it furnished light in our dwellings. Spermaceti in lieu of wax made less expensive and almost all cleanly candles; the baleen of the right-whale was in great demand for umbrella ribs, corset bones and many other purposes, and a product of cetaceous disease formed the basis of several very attractive perfumes.
Petroleum and its distillates have largely superseded whale oil for lubricating and lighting; spermaceti has given place to parafine, also a product of petroleum; whalebone is supplanted by steel and celluloid, and lately there has been discovered a gum in the Amazonian valley that has the exact odoriferous quality of ambergris and can be gathered, imported and sold at a much less cost.
So it is not Improbable that the whale may be lett comparatively at peace before long and in time the sight of one will not be so rare an occurrence as to form an important item in the journal of ocean travelers. But the increase will not be very rapid, as the whale has but one young at a birth and the period of gestation Is believed to be not less than a year.