Written by Jenna Reynolds

President/Director

Save Coastal Wildlife nonprofit 

Whales are one of the most intelligent and awe-inspiring group of animals known as cetaceans to call our oceans home. They are a perfect symbol of the marine environment. Whales are big, brilliant creatures that reign over our planet why still remaining largely mysterious mammals. Whales are an important part of life on Earth. 

In 2020, the threat from commercial fishing gear and ship strikes were seen from the death or damage to a variety of juvenile whale species along the Jersey Shore and surrounding waters. Making it a very sad year to be a whale. 

Once killed along the United States by whaling ships for their body parts, the coastal waters of the Jersey Shore now see hundreds of whales every year aboard popular whale watching tours out of Highlands, Belmar, Atlantic City and Cape May. Last year there were more than 300 whale sightings from Cape May to Sandy Hook made up of humpbacks, finbacks, minkes, North Atlantic right whales, and others, as these magnificent marine mammals were feeding or passing through on migrations.

The rise in whale populations along the Jersey Shore is a great success story, largely due to cleaner waters from the Clean Water Act, and greater protection for wildlife from both the Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act; as well as an increasing abundance of seafood to forage on predominantly from an oily fish known as menhaden or bunker.  The return of whales is something we should all be thrilled about along the Jersey Shore. 

But unfortunately, this swell in whale species has now brought problems. These beautiful creatures are swimming in greater numbers within marine waters where they have not splashed around in more than a century. Inevitably, conflicts will arise between people and whales around the world and right here along the busy and bustling waters of the Jersey Shore. 

It’s not always easy getting on with your new neighbors, particularly when they’re enormous wild animals. Whales and other marine mammals are returning home in large numbers to habitats in what was once their historic range while coming into human-wildlife conflicts with various economic interests. 

Conflicts arise from nets, thick lines, and buoys used by commercial fishermen to catch a variety of popular fish and shellfish. Many species which people around the world like to eat including flounder, lobster, herring, seabass, tuna, swordfish, monkfish, and butterfish. Entanglements in fishing gear is one of the predominant struggles to whales and pose a serious threat in the northeast to marine mammals. It can cause these sentient animals to suffer a slow and painful death. 

Along the Jersey Shore, one of the first tragedies to take place in 2020 was on a sunny Friday afternoon, a few days after the Memorial Day weekend. On May 29, a juvenile 30-foot humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) was seen swimming in the Shrewsbury River, near the Highlands-Sea Bright Bridge. Wrapped around its head was a commercial fishing net. The nylon web was bound around the whale’s mouth to make it nearly impossible for this creature  to feed on plankton or fish. “It would be like you trying to eat with a face mask on,” said Robert Schoelkopf, executive director of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center, to the local media. We all know how impossible that can be after spending almost a year wearing a face covering due to a pandemic. 

It’s difficult to say for sure where a fishing net would come from to ensnare a juvenile humpback whale near Sandy Hook, NJ. Lethal encounters between fishing gear and whales most often occur when these large animals swim in areas with high commercial fishing activity, such as off the coast of Maine or Massachusetts, but don’t discount New Jersey. Atlantic City, Barnegat Light, Belford, Cape May and Point Pleasant are some of the top fishing ports in the northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. 

Nets are a popular tool used by commercial fishermen to catch fish. Drift nets are basically a wall of netting that hangs in the water column often several miles in length made of monofilament or multifilament nylon to catch fish. The nets are often dropped from a ship at sunset or at night because they can be seen by the fish if dropped during the day. Other tools of the trade include surrounding nets, which are fine, heavy nets that capture fish by encircling them, and pound nets are stationary nets staked in the water to form a labyrinth-like chamber into which fish can easily enter but cannot clearly escape.

Wayward nets drifting willingly in the water might come about from ghost fishing. As defined by NOAA (National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration): Ghost fishing “is any discarded, lost, or abandoned, fishing gear in the marine environment. This gear continues to fish and trap animals, entangle and potentially kill marine life, smother habitat, and act as a hazard to navigation. Derelict fishing gear, such as nets or traps and pots, is one of the main types of debris impacting the marine environment today.” The discarded gear gets dragged around in the ocean by storms, tides and currents to damage marine habitats and kill marine animals for years or even decades. Many modern fishing nets are made of tough, synthetic nylon that can take centuries to break down. 

A net around the head wasn’t the only problem for this young humpback. It was also hit on the back by a recreational motorboat. When the 30-foot whale was coming up for a breath of air, it surfaced in front of a moving boat and was smacked on the back by an approximately 35-foot fiberglass vessel as it was heading towards Sandy Hook Bay. While this boat strike didn’t seem to harm the whale right away, serious internal injuries can ensue from a ship strike. It’s essentially blunt trauma that can result in contusions, abrasions, internal hemorrhages, and broken bones. 

 The juvenile whale would eventually make its way back into the Atlantic Ocean, following possible underwater communications from other nearby whales to guide it into the sea. A professional rescue team from Cape Cod, Massachusetts was called to help remove the net from the whale, but the call for help would be too late. The young humpback whale with a nylon fishing net over its face and a boat injury on its back went missing in the massive ocean. 

Fortunately, later in the summer this young humpback whale was spotted again. It was feeding near Jones Beach, New York on menhaden. Whatever the whale did to get rid of the net, it worked. The humpback was able to feed again and live for another day. Troublesome fishing gear, however, would still continue to harass other whales throughout the year. 

On August 1, a humpback whale was spotted entangled in nets, ropes and buoys off the coast of Jones Beach, in the Ambrose Shipping Channel of New York. In this case, a rescue crew was able to arrive in time. It took several days for multiple teams, including the Coast Guard and the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society to disentangle the whale, but this cetacean was able to swim away. Nasty scars, however, would persist for a lifetime to show the world it was swimming in the commercial waters of the Northwest Atlantic Ocean.

“Without [human] intervention,” Scott Landry, CCS Director of Marine Animal Entanglement Response stated, “this whale would not have survived. While it’s not entirely out of the woods yet, its prospects are now 100% better than what they were. We are optimistic we will see the whale again and like the majority of humpback whales off our coast it will bear the scars of entanglement.” 

Discarded nets or vertical ropes connected to buoys on the water’s surface to crab, lobster or other fish traps on the ocean floor will sometimes snag a whale’s fin, fluke or across the mouth. Entanglement in fishing gear is deadly for whales. Smaller whales will die from drowning when they are pulled below the surface, unable to come up for a breath of air. Larger whales will suffer for weeks or even years with ropes or nets chafing into their skin, muscle, and bone. Dragging heavy fishing gear leaves a whale exhausted, starved, and impede its ability to reproduce.

Not many people realize there is an active trap lobster fishery in New Jersey. You might think that lobster dinner you ordered at a restaurant along the Jersey Shore came from Maine. Guess again! Oceanic waters a mile or two off the Jersey Shore are home to the American lobster (Homarus americanus). It can be found in deep-sea waters of about 20 to 1,000 feet or greater. Baited pots and long lines are hauled in and out of the water to catch someone’s lobster dinner. In 2015, NOAA Fisheries estimated the revenue from American lobster landings in New Jersey totaled over $2.2 million. A year later in 2016, about 700,000 pounds of lobster were caught in New Jersey, which accounted for about 2 percent of the total annual North Atlantic catch. Yet all it takes is one piece of wayward fishing gear to cause damage to a whale. 

During mid-September, a dead juvenile whale was towed to shore a day after being spotted entangled in fishing lines off the coast of Atlantic City, NJ. The 29-foot-2 inch humpback whale, which weighed an estimated 15 to 20 tons, had fishing lines snarled around the whale’s body. The young cetacean probably struggled in the rope before succumbing to death from the lines, which restricted its breathing, eating, or swimming.

Perhaps the most tragic event in 2020 occurred both along the Jersey Shore and the coast of Massachusetts. It involved the entanglement of two endangered North Atlantic right whales, a mother and son.  

On Monday, October 12, the Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine, NJ notified NOAA Fisheries that staff aboard the American Princess, a New York-based whale watching cruise ship, spotted a North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) at around 2pm on October 11. The sighting was approximately 2.7 nautical miles east of Sea Bright, New Jersey. 

While reviewing photos from the whale watching trip, naturalists from Gotham Whale observed fishing lines ensnaring the whale. After examining the photos more closely, biologists with NOAA Fisheries believed the young whale was in extremely poor condition, with large lesions on its body. The whale had two visible lines partially embedded around its head and a more complex entanglement around the body. 

On October 16th, wildlife biologists with the New England Aquarium had identified the whale from its individual fluke pattern as identification number 4680. The last known sighting of 4680 was during the summer on July 7, 2020, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. At that time the young whale was gear-free. 

What happened to 4680?  He was a 4-year-old male who probably made the worst mistake of his life. He went diving for food where there were heavy lines and buoys in place from a pot fishery to catch lobsters, crabs or other shellfish. Now he was badly entangled in those fishing lines and could starve to death due to being restricted by the gear. He might be suffering from physical trauma and systemic infections. 

Northern right whales are the most endangered large whale species on the planet. They have been listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act since 1970. In 2019, the number of North Atlantic right whales was estimated to be just 356, which was a precipitous decline from an estimated population size of 409 whales just the year before. If the trend continues, Northern right whales could all be gone by 2040. 

The number of reproductive females—the lifeblood of the species—is also disturbingly low. Wildlife biologists estimate there are fewer than 94 breeding females remaining and very few females successfully calve each year. Only 22 births have been observed in the last four calving seasons. Just ten calves were born in the 2019-2020 calving season, and two were killed by vessel collisions. 

The young right whale 4680, was the son of a 19-year-old female known as Dragon (#3180). Dragon was an important reproducing female. She was entering what would be the prime of her reproductive life. She would help to increase the population of endangered right whales. Females of this species can have as many as nine calves in a lifetime. 

Dragon had given birth to her first calf in 2008, but sadly that calf died for unknown reasons the same week it was first spotted by the New England Aquarium's right whale team. Although her second calf seemed to be doing well and was last seen feeding somewhere off the waters of New England, her third calf, born in 2016, was 4680 and now he was entangled in fishing gear and near death off the Jersey Shore. 

But help for this young whale would not come easy. It took several days for a crew of marine wildlife biologists to find the whale and further document its entanglement and injuries. Several days of stormy and windy weather prevented a rescue crew into the air to locate the 4680.

By October 20, 2020, Dragon’s son went missing. A team from the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society searched the New York Bight and a team from the Center for Coastal Studies searched the area south of Nantucket. Neither team had spotted 4680.

Sadly, Dragon would never know what happened to her son. Earlier in the year, on February 24, 2020, Dragon was also spotted entangled in fishing gear. A buoy and rope were trapped in her mouth about 45 miles off Nantucket. From an aerial survey, Dragon’s mouth was photographed agape with orange cyamids (whale lice) and a buoy and rope tangled around her mouth. She did not appear to be feeding. Dragon was emaciated, her skin tone was unusually light, and she had patches of whale lice - all indicators of a long-term weakened condition. The entangled fishing gear was blocking her mouth, preventing Dragon from feeding and causing her condition to deteriorate rapidly. Before help could arrive, Dragon went missing and was never seen again.

Both Dragon and her calf 4680 were severely entangled whales who went missing in the enormous ocean before help could arrive. Both mother and son were not expected to survive their life-threatening injuries. Most likely they had died as many others before them did. The leading cause of death today for Northern right whales is entanglement in fishing gear. 

Dr. Scott Kraus and others tell the devastating story of another right whale named Wart (#1140) and her family. As described in the book, The North Atlantic Right Whale: Disappearing Giants, the adult female Wart was named for a, “wart-like feature in the callosity pattern on her head.” “Wart is a famous mom,” as her description goes, “who between 1982 and [2000] had 7 calves, 13 grand-calves, and 6 great-grand-calves.” Unfortunately, all of her offspring including her great-grandchildren died between 1982 (her first calf, a female) and 2014 (her last great grand-child, a male). No one is left now. As the authors of book stressed, “the story of Wart’s family is a tale of human impact.” They all died from entanglements in fishing gear or from boat strikes.

Ship or boat strikes often result in the death or damage of any whale species it comes in contact with. As more whales show up every year to feed, rest or migrate, they are becoming threatened by collisions with vessels. For those whales that are not killed immediately, a collision can result in horrific and serious internal injuries, or deep scars and severed spines from ship propellers to make a whale suffer a slow, painful death.

The first reported death in 2020 of a whale from a ship strike was in June. It was sadly another young North Atlantic right whale. The whale had died somewhere not far from Elberon, NJ, within the urban waters of the New York Bight, a roughly triangular indentation along the Atlantic coast of the United States, extending northeasterly from Cape May Inlet in New Jersey to Montauk Point on the eastern tip of Long Island.

Located in the New York Bight is the Port of New York and New Jersey, the port district of the New York metropolitan area. It’s the busiest port on the eastern seaboard. On average, about 15 cargo ships enter the harbor every day, sometimes less, sometimes more. This puts whales in a high traffic zone and subjected to potential ship strikes from sizable ships or tankers. 

According to the International Whaling Commission, the increasing size of commercial shipping fleets and the ever higher velocity of recreational boats results in rising numbers of ship collisions with cetaceans. Collisions with whales from large vessels often go unnoticed and unreported, since big boats are less likely to detect a strike. 

Due to the potential large size and speed of a ship, it may be unable to divert course even if they do see a marine mammal. In addition, a large ship creates something called a ‘bow null effect’ blocking the engine noise by the bow, creating a quiet zone in front of the vessel, and leaving an aquatic animal unaware of the pending hazard. Whales are also often unable to avoid ships, because many move slowly in the water when foraging or resting.

At the age of 15, a female right whale named by scientists as #3560, had her first known calf in early December 2019. The exact date and location are unknown, but the event likely took place in the shallow, coastal waters of South Carolina, Georgia, or northeastern Florida. These waters in the southern United States are the only known calving area where females regularly give birth during the winter.

The last sighting of mother and child in the southeastern U.S. was off Cape Lookout, North Carolina, on April 6, 2020. At that point, it appeared that mother and child were travelling north to feeding areas off New England or eastern Canada. The young calf, however, would never make it.

In the morning of June 25, a boat captain reported to NOAA Fisheries that he spotted a floating whale carcass four miles off Elberon, New Jersey, not far from the entrance to New York Harbor. Researchers from the Marine Mammal Stranding Center were deployed along with the U.S. Coast Guard. The dead whale was identified as the male calf of #3560. A necropsy was conducted and found wounds along the head and body that were consistent with two different vessel collisions. The wounds from a ship strike on the front of the body were several weeks old. Propeller wounds and a skeg or rudder wound across the tail stock came from a second vessel collision. This second set of wounds was likely inflicted shortly before the young animal died. 

A right whale’s habitat and migration routes are close to major ports along the Atlantic seaboard. They often overlap with shipping lanes, making right whales vulnerable to collisions with ships.

The killing spree would continue. In early November, around a 25-foot juvenile humpback whale was found floating dead in the water between Sea Isle City and Avalon. On Christmas day a juvenile 31-foot male humpback whale was also found washed ashore dead at Barnegat Lighthouse State Park in Long Beach Island. It’s unclear how both of these young whales died due to the poor composition of their bodies. There is a good chance though the whales were hit by a ship as they were busy foraging for fish.

Another possibility is illness. On June 15, a young Northern minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) died in the surf off of Spring Lake, NJ. The whale was first found sick and was “disoriented and non-responsive” as lifeguards tried to re-direct it into deep water while the whale continued to try to beach itself. The likely cause of death was determined to be brain disease from eating fish with parasites. The microorganisms get in their brain from the fish and the brain becomes infected. 

What can be done to help save the whales (again)! As of now, the threats are being examined by scientists. NOAA Fisheries, the lead federal government organization to ensure the conservation of whales under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, have called for a series of “unusual mortality event along the Atlantic Coast” from Maine through Florida.

Since 2016, there has been a Humpback Whale Unusual Mortality Event Along the Atlantic Coast, and since 2017 there has been both a Minke and North Atlantic Right Whale Unusual Mortality Event Along the Atlantic Coast. All were called for by NOAA Fisheries and have assembled an independent team of scientists to coordinate with the Working Group on Marine Mammal Unusual Mortality Events to review data, sample stranded whales, and determine the next steps for the investigation.

As of this writing, data from NOAA Fisheries shows that 145 humpback whales have died on Atlantic beaches in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic since 2016. The State of New York has had the most humpback whale strandings with 31. Massachusetts is second with 28, and New Jersey is fifth with 16 humpback whale strandings. “Partial or full necropsy examinations were conducted on approximately half of the whales,” NOAA Fisheries writes, “Of the whales examined, about 50 percent had evidence of human interaction, either ship strike or entanglement in fishing gear.” 

A total of 103 minke whales have died along the Atlantic coast as of this writing since 2017 according to NOAA Fisheries. Massachussetts had the most minke whale strandings with 35. Maine is second with 18 and New York is third with 16. The Jersey Shore is not far off. The State of New Jersey is fourth with 10 minke whales since 2017. NOAA Fisheries states, “Full or partial necropsy examinations were conducted on more than 60% of the whales. Preliminary findings in several of the whales have shown evidence of human interactions or infectious disease.”

For North Atlantic Right Whales, 2017 was the deadliest year for stranded whales with 17 according to NOAA Fisheries. There were two stranded whales in 2020. The number of seriously injured right whales though, were high in both 2018 and 2020 with five. NOAA Fisheries notes that “Annual North Atlantic Right Whale Serious Injury (SI) Cases are when whales are last seen alive.” There were two confirmed deaths of North Atlantic right whales. One of them being the whale found near Elberon, NJ in June from sharp and blunt force trauma (vessel strike), and the other off the coast of North Carolina.  

Members of Save Coastal Wildlife nonprofit, as well as other marine life organizations, have identified these and other threats to whales along the coastal waters of the northeast including New Jersey, and the changes that must be made if cetaceans are to continue to co-exist safely with people.

 For starters, new technologies need to be put in place that aim to decrease whale entanglements including rope-less fishing gear – the deployment of gear without fixed vertical buoys and ropes in the water column. This could dramatically reduce or eliminate whale entanglements, while allowing fishermen to continue their livelihoods.

Rope-less fishing systems attach to the first trap or in a series of connected traps on the bottom of the sea. When fishermen are ready to haul up their traps, they can send a remote signal to trigger the system to release a lift bag or buoy to allow the traps to be hauled up without stationary ropes in the water ropes or “vertical lines” connected to buoys at the water’s surface. 

At Save Coastal Wildlife we fully recognize the economic importance of the fishing industry and that there is no intent from fishermen to harm whales. They are just trying to make a living. Yet the entanglement of whales in fishing gear is of great concern to the health of marine mammals in the northeast, and changes needed to be made. 

 Concern for boat traffic is also critical. No doubt slowing down ships will help to save the lives of many whales. 

Just like vehicles around a school zone or on crowded city streets, ships and other vessels need to slow down in areas where there is a high probability of marine mammal activity (especially in feeding areas). Research shows that boats and ships that operate at slower speeds (10kts or less) significantly reduce the risk of mortally wounding a whale if struck.  Slowing down may also provide the animal with an increased reaction time to move away from the vessel.  An example where this has worked well is in the St. Lawrence River estuary in Canada. Ship pilots significantly reduced their speed across the area, with 72 percent of the transits in 2014 occurring at speeds less than 13.6 miles per hour. Since 2014, there have been no or few whale strikes reported.

The National Marine Fisheries Service needs to expand the areas when its existing 10-knot rule applies. It needs to expand the vessel-speed restriction area to the entire New York Bight, not just from just the mouth of New York Harbor or Delaware Bay. Also, all vessel-speed restrictions need to be mandatory, rather than voluntary, to avoid collisions that kill and injure all whales.

Essentially, we are asking for safety or school zones along the Jersey Shore and within the New York Bight, where vessels would have to slow down to keep boaters and whales safe without stopping vital ship traffic. Better technology could also help detects whales using acoustic and thermal sensors and immediately send alerts to nearby boat captains.

 While some species of whales are slowly recovering from commercial hunting, like the humpback whale, all species of whales continue to be threatened from the direct result of human activities. An increasing number of whales every year are being tangled up in fishing gear or struck by ships near the coastlines of New Jersey and New York.

 Whales are protected from harassment under the Marne Mammal Protection Act of 1972. The act was enacted in partial response to growing concerns among scientists and the general public that certain species and populations of marine mammals were in danger of extinction or depletion as a result of human activities. While whales have been protected from commercial hunting in the United States by the 1986 worldwide ban on whaling, don’t believe whales are fully safe or protected just yet from human activities. Humans continue to threaten these peaceful creatures. 

There is much work to be done to save the whales along the Jersey Shore. Please contact the Greater Atlantic Regional NOAA Fisheries Office and tell them to call for new fishing technologies that are ropeless and to expand the area and times when its existing 10-knot rule applies to the entire New York Bight. To make all vessel-speed restrictions mandatory, rather than voluntary to avoid collisions that kill and injure all whales.

Additionally, please help support Save Coastal Wildlife nonprofit so we able to continue educating people about the current plight of whales from ships and fishing gear. A conversation about protecting whales along the Jersey Shore has sadly been absent for far too long. Now is the time to begin a dialog so together we can protect whales and other species of coastal wildlife along the much beloved and in demand waters of New Jersey.