NORTH WILDWOOD, N.J. — Officials worked to remove a massive humpback whale that was found beached under the dock of an abandoned home on the southern New Jersey shore on Sunday.
New Jersey State Police said they were called to reports of the whale Sunday morning after it was found under a dock near the Grassy Sound Marina in North Wildwood.
Videos shared by the Grassy Sound Marina on Facebook show the animal wedged beneath the pillars of a dock.
“We’re very popular right now with the whale,” Jim Mooers, the marina’s owner, told KYW-TV. “We’re a whale-watching site, I guess.”
The humpback whale was estimated to be 25 feet long, and biologists told WPVI that the animal was likely dead for some time.
“It was gross. It was like all decaying and big bites out of it,” Tom Roberts, who saw the whale, told WPVI.
Humpback whales live in oceans all over the world, and are so named for the distinctive hump on its back, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. All humpback whales have been listed as endangered since 1970.
Scientists at the beach told WPVI that there was no obvious reason why the whale was stranded, but said that the animal may have been hit by a boat’s propeller.
“Never before. … We had dead whales on the beach but nothing back here that I’ve been for 20 years,” Mooers told KYW-TV.
New Jersey State Police removed the 39-ton whale at high tide, KYW-TV reported.
Officials will conduct testing on the whale to determine its cause of death, WPVI reported.