A 35-foot humpback whale that washed up dead on the New Jersey shore Sept. 28 might have been the black object the ill-fated fishing boat The Chief hit before sinking and leaving its seven-man crew stranded in the Atlantic Ocean for two days.
Robert Shoelkoph, director of New Jersey’s Marine Mammal Standing Center, said that the humpback’s time of death and injuries coincide with The Chief’s sinking on Sept. 24.
“The whale was hit by a boat,” Shoelkoph said. “We can’t substantiate that that particular boat was the one that hit the whale.”
The humpback was struck by a boat with such force, Shoelkoph said, that the impact drove its stomach and intestines out of its mouth. Coast Guard investigators handling the fatality investigation could not be reached for comment before press time.
Francis Gessler, the mate on The Chief who was captaining the 50-foot wooden-hulled vessel when it sunk, said he does not know what the boat crashed into but anything is possible.
“I’ve heard of people hitting whales before, so it’s not out of question,” Gessler said. “But I can’t tell people, ‘Oh, yeah, I hit a whale.’ It’s odd, but stuff happens.”
Shoelkoph said that humpback whales migrate south near the Mid-Atlantic coast this time of year, to the Silver Banks east of the Dominican Republic, to mate and give birth. They head back north in the spring when the water warms up in the Atlantic off of Maine and Massachusetts.
Shoelkoph said accidents involving boats or ships and whales in the Mid-Atlantic are not uncommon. The humpback was spotted late last Wednesday off the shore of Cape May, N.J. Officials placed a tracking device on the whale and it washed ashore about 4 a.m. Thursday, Shoelkoph said.
Anyone who spots a stranded whale is encouraged to contact Shoelkoph and the Marine Mammal Standing Center at (609) 266-0538.
“When (anyone) sees these animals, (they should) notify us,” Shoelkoph said. “It probably would have made it easier.”
The seven Pennsylvania fishermen boarded The Chief in the Indian River Marina in the early evening of Friday, Sept. 23, bound for a tuna fishing trip. After fishing that night and catching four large tuna early Saturday morning, they headed back toward the Inlet to avoid rough conditions.
Before noon, about 35 miles off shore, the vessel struck a “big black object” just under the surface and started taking on water. The Chief sunk in less than three minutes, according to two crew members, leaving the seven men stranded on a four-man life raft for nearly two days.
A Coast Guard helicopter team out of Atlantic City, N.J., spotted the crew about 70 miles offshore Monday morning, Sept. 25, and returned them to the marina, where they met a jubilant group of family and friends, and the media. None of the crew members were seriously injured in the ordeal.