Dead 43-foot whale is chopped up and transported off New Jersey beach after its carcass washed ashore

  • The badly decomposed animal may have been a Sei whale that was hit by a ship
  • It had been floating offshore for at least three days before being spotted Tuesday
  • Officials used knives atop wooden poles to slice the whale into smaller pieces 
  • They then dragged and carried the pieces away to a dump to be buried

By Jordan Gass-Poore for Dailymail.com and Associated Press

Published: | Updated:

A badly decomposed whale has been hauled off a New Jersey beach. 

The 43-foot whale may have been a Sei whale, but the poor condition of the carcass makes a firm identification difficult, according to the Brigantine-based Marine Mammal Stranding Center.

The condition also makes it difficult to determine how the whale died, but the animal may have been hit by ship - its main threat, the Asbury Park Press reported.

Scroll down for video 

Jay Pagel, with the Marine Mammal Stranding Center, uses a large knife mounted on a pole to dismember a 43-foot whale that washed ashore in Toms River,  New Jersey, on Tuesday

Jay Pagel, with the Marine Mammal Stranding Center, uses a large knife mounted on a pole to dismember a 43-foot whale that washed ashore in Toms River,  New Jersey, on Tuesday

Public works crews in Toms River use a front-end loader to haul away part of the whale

Public works crews in Toms River use a front-end loader to haul away part of the whale

The carcass, which appeared to have been gnawed by sharks, had been floating offshore for at least three days before washing ashore Tuesday morning on Chadwick Beach section of Toms River.

Authorities roped the animal off with crime scene tape to keep a crowd of onlookers at a distance.

Kerry Frew told NJ.com that he watched the whale come ashore around 5.30pm Tuesday. 

'It took about a half an hour for it to get up here, because it was clearly already dead and moving really slow,' said Frew. 'You could tell right away that it was a whale. And it looked like it had been bit by a shark, because it looks like there are shark bites all over it.' 

Courtesy of Asbury Park Press 

The whale, whose cause of death could not immediately be determined, was dismembered 

The whale, whose cause of death could not immediately be determined, was dismembered 

Pieces of the whale, who may have been struck by a ship, were taken to a dump to be buried 

Pieces of the whale, who may have been struck by a ship, were taken to a dump to be buried 

Technicians from the Stranding center used giant knives atop 6-foot-long wooden poles to slice the whale into smaller pieces. Public works crews then used front-end loaders to drag and carry the pieces away to be taken to a dump to be buried.

'It's more important to get it off the beach because, at this point, it's a health risk,' Bob Schoelkopf, the center's director, told the Asbury Park Press.

It may have been the same whale that was spotted outside a New York harbor by a Norwegian cruise ship, Schoelkopf said. 

The whale had been floating offshore for three days before washing up on Chadwick Beach

The whale had been floating offshore for three days before washing up on Chadwick Beach

Sei whales can grow up to 60 feet and weigh 100,000 pounds, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

They are typically found in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans.

This is the third instance of a dead whale washing up on a New Jersey shore this year. In March, a humpback whale died in the Delaware River, and another was found on Long Beach Island in January.  

Most watched News videos