A whale that collided with a small boat and knocked a woman overboard at the Jersey Shore has died, officials said.
The incident occurred around 3:40 p.m. Saturday in Barnegat Bay near Long Beach Island in Ocean County when the 20-foot minke whale hit the boat, knocking a woman into the water and nearly capsizing the vessel.
Boat Captain Charlie Nunn told NBC 10 Philadelphia the whale likely got anxious and went into fight-or-flight mode, leading to “a close call, a freak accident” in shallow water.
“They’re not supposed to be in three feet of water,” Nunn said. “They keep bumping into something, it’s probably fight-or-flight for the poor thing.”
He added that the woman who fell into the water was uninjured.
Kim Mancini, who took videos of the incident, said the whale was trying to get to deeper water.
“It was really in distress,” she told 6ABC. “That’s when it would go under boats; it was a crazy experience.”
Nearly an hour before the crash, the whale was reported to the New Jersey Marine Mammal Standing Center, Coast Guard and state agencies. It may have hit a pontoon boat after the initial crash. It was also spotted resting in a sandbar after swimming into the boat.
The MMSC said the whale was dead when they arrived at the sandbar. The organization said it hoped to tow the whale away on Monday and perform a necropsy to determine the animal’s cause of death.
The MMSC advised boaters to stay at least 150 feet from the whale carcass.
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