Massive 38-Foot Humpback Whale Washed Up On Staten Island Beach

A whale was spotted in New York City over the weekend, however it wasn't a beautiful, majestic sighting. Unfortunately a dead humpback whale was discovered off the shore of Staten Island. The creature was 38 feet long and appeared on the shore, Friday September 17th in Great Kills Park on the east shore of the borough.

The Atlantic Marine Conservation Society came to the scene to examine the body and work with the state Department of Conservation, NYC Parks Department and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries. They haven't come to the conclusion of the cause of death yet, but it could have been related to humans. After examining they found two human-related injuries, according to the Staten Island Advance: “wounds around the mouth and head consistent with entanglement in gear, and a large piece of metal debris lodged in his intestines, causing damage to the digestive tract."

“It’s still early to say if these factors contributed to the animal’s death,” Rob DiGiovanni, founder and chief scientist of AMSEAS, told the local newspaper. “It’s just saying that this is what we observed and then the samples we [will] send out to a pathologist and further analysis will be conducted. But what we found in our preliminary findings would be that it doesn’t look like a naturally occurring event.”

The whale has now been buried at the beach with samples still yet to be analyzed to find out what happened to it.


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