As whales wash ashore in N.J., development fears find a convenient resting place

The humpback was huge, more than 32 feet long, and not moving. Waves crashed into the whale’s body as it lay on the taupe-colored sands of Brigantine Beach, New Jersey. The tongue was enlarged. Greg Fuller could see the creature’s outstretched and lifeless tail, and felt something like guilt wash over him. He left his dog in the truck, took out his phone, and filmed the whale’s massive frame in the rising tide.

In his 42 years living in Brigantine, a lifetime of salt and sand, Fuller had seen humpbacks swimming in the Atlantic while offshore fishing, but to see such a large creature immobile on the beach on Jan. 13 was, he told me, “astonishing.” His parents, who have lived in Brigantine since the 1970s, saw a beached whale only once, before he was born. In the last month and a half alone, four whales have washed up on the Jersey Shore.

“Something’s not right,” Fuller told me. “This is my hometown and we’re screaming at the top of our lungs.”

Whales occupy a unique space in our cultural imagination, and that may be especially true of beach communities like those at the Jersey Shore. When a giant creature of the deep washes up, it is jarring. We mourn. On New Jersey’s beaches this winter, that sense of grief has been exponential: The humpback in Brigantine is the fourth whale to beach in South Jersey since December — two were found in Atlantic City, one in Strathmere. Other whales are being found on beaches beyond the state — one in New York, one in North Carolina. Each is unsettling in its own way.

As residents have searched for answers, some wonder if the construction of wind farms off the New Jersey coast has played a role in the deaths of the whales — something that researchers say is unlikely because the recent beachings appear to be part of a trend that dates back years, before the start of offshore work by Ørsted, a Danish wind-power developer.

Since the beginning of 2016, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been monitoring an “unusual mortality event” of humpback whale deaths up and down the East Coast. Of the 178 beachings from Maine to Florida, 22 have been in New Jersey.

A necropsy of the Brigantine whale revealed injuries to the head, thoracic region, and right pectoral flipper. Its blubber was thick. The whale’s stomach was full of partially digested fish, a sign of health. The Marine Mammal Stranding Center, a New Jersey-based nonprofit dedicated to animal rescue and rehabilitation, suggested that the cause of death was likely “blunt trauma injuries consistent with those from a vessel strike.” The humpback that washed up in Atlantic City in early January likely met a similar fate.

After the necropsy, the beach becomes a graveyard. Out of sight, the whale’s body will decompose slowly under the sand. Sometimes, the animal is towed out to sea.

Lauren Gaches, a spokesperson for NOAA, noted in an email: “To date, no whale mortality has been attributed to offshore wind activities.” But that doesn’t mean that Jersey Shore residents like Fuller haven’t been asking hard questions about why the creatures they love are dying.

And those queries have reached lawmakers in Washington, where Congressman Jeff Van Drew, whose district includes much of the Jersey Shore, this month demanded a halt to wind farm projects until investigations could be held. In Trenton, Gov. Phil Murphy — citing NOAA’s research — has deflected those calls. Local environmentalists have also cautioned against speculation that the construction of wind farms might be playing a role in the whales’ deaths.

“Blaming offshore wind projects on whale mortality without evidence is not only irresponsible but overshadows the very real threats of climate change, plastic pollution, and unsustainable fishery management practices to these animals,” said Anjuli Ramos-Busot, New Jersey director of the Sierra Club.

Still, those protests matter little to Fuller. Since he saw the humpback’s body, he has had trouble sleeping. He’s called the offices of Murphy and Van Drew. He’s suggesting that people sign an online petition to stop work on the turbines. And when he showed his 12-year-old daughter the cell phone video he took of the whale in Brigantine, she cried.

“The residents here are livid,” Fuller said.

Humpback whales are found in every ocean in the world. The body of an adult is larger than a typical SEPTA bus. To watch a humpback eating is to come face to face with a mystery, the divine. In a method called bubble net feeding, humpbacks will collectively exhale, encircle their prey, and then dine as a group on a meal of krill, anchovies, herring, sand lance, and invertebrates that can’t move through the bubbles.

And when humpbacks sing — in a voice that sounds like a cross between a Gregorian chant and a haunting howl — their songs can carry for miles underwater, and often continue for hours. Baby humpbacks whisper to their mothers. Researchers have uncovered that songs spread between humpback populations; whales in Australia share their songs with pods in French Polynesia, who then pass those songs along to others in Ecuador.

The intelligence of these whales is something more than we can fathom.

I was once acquainted with their majesty up close. In October 2015, while hitching a ride on a sailboat off the east coast of Australia, I glimpsed a humpback, likely on its way back to Antarctica to feed. It breached the surface of the water — a soaring jump into the air — and then crashed into the waves. Seeing the humpback rise up out of the waves, then merge with the horizon, I shrieked. It was balletic, acrobatic.

It is easy to forget the sheer magnitude of the ocean until one of its creatures washes up dead in front of a salt water taffy stand, or jumps up to greet us, all tail and ocean and breath.

It always comes back to the body. Seeing a humpback lifeless on the sand, it is unavoidable to think about death — especially when these creatures represent peace, and are stranded in a place that represents comfort. Our region loves the Shore. Humpbacks are an embodiment of gentleness, of music, of grace.

Years ago, in Australia, I interviewed Diana King, an Antarctic researcher based in Wollongong. King studies species of Antarctic moss that are indicator species, meaning that changes in their distribution can be used as an early warning system for understanding climate-change effects globally. Antarctic mosses are tiny — sometimes 500 individual mosses can grow in a space the size of your fingernail — and they grow slowly, usually less than a millimeter per year.

After she explained her research, we spoke about how difficult it is to get people to care about Antarctic moss. Big whales elicit big emotions. But tiny creatures in far-away places? They are vulnerable, too. Just harder to see.

Perhaps the generalized unease on the Jersey Shore about the beached humpbacks boils down to this: The larger the creature, the easier it is to empathize with. We so often live detached from the ocean. Whales are a convenient resting place for our fears. Wind turbines may be the misplaced target of that anxiety, but it could be directed anywhere.

The body of a beached humpback startles us into thinking about the fragility of life, the rising tide that is our own mortality, and the permanence of death. It can be hard to face — and even harder to look away from.