A 20-foot minke whale is dead after striking a boat off the Jersey Shore, knocking a passenger into the water
On Monday morning officials will tow the whale from Barnegat Bay to a New Jersey state park where they will perform a necropsy to determine the cause of death.
A 20-foot-long minke whale died off the Jersey Shore on Saturday after striking and nearly capsizing a boat.
According to the Marine Mammal Stranding Center, a boat hit the animal in Barnegat Bay in Ocean County around 3:40 p.m. Saturday, knocking a passenger overboard. Sea Tow, which had responded to the area when the whale was first spotted around 2:45 that afternoon, declared the mammal dead.
Videos posted by Kim Mancini on Facebook show the whale swimming in the bay near the inlet, at one point swimming underneath the boat Mancini was filming from. When the whale swam into the other boat, a passenger on Mancini’s boat was heard shouting at the other boater to turn their engine off as the passenger who was knocked into the water swam back to the vessel.
As of Saturday night, the whale’s carcass was still in Barnegat Bay and the Marine Mammal Stranding Center was asking boaters to stay at least 150 feet from it.
On Monday morning officials will tow the whale to a New Jersey state park where they will perform a necropsy to determine the cause of death.
According to the center there have been three whales stranded in New Jersey this year amid an increase in strandings that began in late 2022.