TOMS RIVER, N.J. (AP) - A marine mammal rescue group says a 43-foot whale that washed up on a New Jersey beach was too badly decomposed to determine how it died.
Bob Schoelkopf (SHELL’-koff), director of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center, says the whale that washed up Wednesday on a beach in the Chadwick Beach section of Toms River had been dead for days and chewed on by sharks.
His group was only able to perform a limited necropsy on the 40 to 50-ton whale, which had to be quickly cut into pieces and hauled away from the beach because it was a health hazard.
The animal might have been a Sei (SAY) whale, but its condition made even that determination difficult to make.
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