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Press of Atlantic City |
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 Stranding
Center may lose quarter of budget to cutsThe Brigantine Organization would lose all of its federal funding if a grant program is eliminated By Sarah Watson Staff Writer Proposed budget cuts for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration could result in Brigantine's Marine Mammal Stranding
Center losing nearly a quarter of its annual $650,000 budget. Included in the series of budget cuts is eliminating the John H. Prescott Marine Mammal Rescue Assistance grant program, which provides money to nonprofit stranding centers throughout the country. Many of those organizations are affiliated with major universities or aquariums, which help provide space, insurance and other needs, stranding center Director Robert Schoelkopf said. But organizations such as the nonprofit in Brigantine must find ways to fund those needs and other operating costs.
 "We
can't afford not to pick (stranded animals) up. New Jersey is
such a populated state that we can't leave these animals on the
beach for days on end to see if they're OK," Schoelkopf said.The stranding center received $160,395 in Fiscal Year 2012 through the Presco grant. Between 2001 and 2010, the center received $852,875 in Prescott grant funding, which was used to replace a truck, hire animal-care staff, provide volunteeer training and obtain boats for water recue, according to an NOAA report on th grant program. Schoelkopf said that regardless of what happens, the center will continue to do its work. "For us to leave an animal when it's in need of assistance, that's not what we do he said. "We're not going to let an anima lay on the beach and slowly die because the federal government doesn't have the money for us to do something." Federal agencies were told by the Obama administration that their Fiscal Year 2013 budget requests were to be at least 5 percent less than what Congress approved for the FY 2011 budget and should include additional potential cuts that, if imposed, would reduce the agency's budget by at least 10 percent, according to a Marine Fisheries Service presentation on the agency's budget. NOAA spokesman David Miller said the agency had to make many difficult choices under those conditions, and that closing the Sandy Hook lab and redistributing the workers to other facilities in the region would save money. "We would plan to minimize any kind of disruption to the research taking place and, equally as important, there are no positions cut," Miller said. As for the Prescott grants, Miller said there still would be some type of money for NOAA employees charged with handling stranding events, but the grants that have been distributed to private centers through a competitive process would cease. "It was one of those instances where we had to take a hard look at program choices and that was one we took a look at,"he said. The Prescott grant program was established in 2001 after a bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. Frank LoBiondo, R-2nd, was passed.  Eliminating
the grant would save $3.7 million and two full-time jobs,
according to the NOAA budget office. Closing the Sandy Hook lab
would eliminate the cost of leasing a building, but the entire
staff and research equipment would be sent either to
Connecticut, Maryland or other labs in the mid-Atlantic region,
the budget office said. The lab provides oceanographic,
fisheries, water quality and climate-related data for New
Jersey, New York and much of the Mid-Atlantic offshore waters.Jason Galanes, a spokesman for LoBiondo, said the congressman was against eliminating the Prescott grants because of the importance of the money. "(LoBiondo) is looking at available options to restore the funding," Galanes said. "Congress gets the last word, so any decision won't be made until the fall, when it goes through the normal appropriations process." The potential loss of the Prescott program, along with the possibility of the Sandy Hook lab closing, has sparked Monmouth County-based advocacy group Clean Ocean Action to start an online petition and to join with several other regional environmental groups to write a letter to Obama protesting the cuts. Closing the Sandy Hook lab "is going to have an incredibly significant impact on our ability, on the state's ability, on the federal government's ability, to monitor the ecosystem of the mid-Atlantic Ocean," said Sean Dixon, coastal policy attorney for Clean Ocean Action. New Jersey has some of the largest fishing ports in the country, including those in Cape May, Sea Isle City and Barnegat Light, and all of the fishery management that is in place comes out of the research at the lab, Dixon said. Dixon said the reduction in funding to the Brigantine stranding center would inhibit the center's ability to quickly respond to strandings of animals, such as dolphins, seals, whales and sea turtles, in distress. "It would be a significant impact to that center's ability to do its job," Dixon said. Contact Sarah Watson: 609-272-7216 SWatson@pressofac.com Sign a petition to keep the MMSC funded |
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 Crews
rush to bury dead whale in O.C. Huge carcass carted in pieces to north end. By Michael Miller Staff Writer OCEAN CITY — The second-largest animal on Earth created an equally huge mess on the 7th Street beach. Public Works crews raced the tide Tuesday to dispose of a dead finback whale that washed ashore Monday, creating an oily, smelly mess within sniffing distance of the island's most populous north-end neighborhoods. "You can smell it," Fire Capt. Robert Stanton said. "A friend of mine got some of the oil on his shoes when he was on the beach yesterday. Now he can't drive his car. The smell is untenable. So he'll be walking." The Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine identified the specimen as a 60-foot finback whale. The finback whale is the second-largest 
animal ever to have lived on Earth. The whales can dwarf even the
biggest dinosaurs. Only the blue whale is bigger.Experts with the center spent the day taking tissue samples and performing a necropsy, the animal equivalent of an autopsy. They found multiple broken bones, suggesting the leviathan was struck by a ship, center Director Bob Schoelkopf said. "Animals are feeding, and they come up to take a breath, and they get hit," Schoelkopf said. Before the city could do anything with the decomposing whale, employees first had to build sand ramps over jetties and outfall pipes north of 7th Street to ferry the remains to a burial site on the beach near the Ocean City-Longport Bridge. Burying whales is a tradition born from practicality in southern New Jersey. There is simply no easy way to get rid of 50 tons of rotting blubber and bone. Towing the floating whale back out to sea would create a navigational hazard for boats and create problems for other beach towns if the whale floated back to shore. Business Administrator Michael Dattilo said the beach at 7th Street was not deep enough to dig a whale's grave without tapping groundwater. The city was fortunate to have leased a specially designed dumptruck this month for beach maintenance, which made the disposal job easier, he said. Staff with the Marine Mammal Stranding Center used a portable grinding wheel to sharpen flensing knives they used to dissect the whale. The tools have not changed much since the 1700s, when Cape May County had .a thriving whaling industry. Workers from the center sliced the whale into manageable pieces. A heavy front-end loader with gripping claws loaded slabs of blubber into the dumptruck, which carted them away for burial. Workers raced the tide, which was expected to block truck access to the burial site at the jetties. Dattilo said work would resume once the tides permit. He said they did not expect to complete the work Tuesday, and would continue today, if needed. Schoelkopf said finback whales eat small fish called sand lances off the coast of New Jersey. Instead of teeth, they use baleen to filter water from their food. They are among the faster species of whale and are nicknamed "the greyhound of the sea," according to the American Cetacean Society. Adults grow to more than 80 feet and 70 tons. They are found globally, including occasional sightings off southern New Jersey, Schoelkopf said. The U.S. Coast Guard enforces strict speed limits off the New Jersey coast from November to April to protect whales, particularly the critically endangered northern right whale. Boats 65 feet or longer must operate 10 knots per hour or less in designated areas along the Atlantic coast, including the mouth of the Delaware Bay and New York Bay. About two right whales die from boat strikes every year, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. This is a serious threat to the western North Atlantic population, believed to number fewer than 400 individuals. Schoelkopf said the center is trying to determine whether the finback whale was already dead when a boat struck it. Based on its advanced decomposition, it had been floating for at least a week, he said. But in Ocean City, the whale proved to be a spectacle for hundreds of visitors who crowded the Boardwalk for a rare chance to see one, dead or not. Strandings are unusual enough in southern New Jersey that part of Strathmere known as Whale Beach was named for one of the behemoths buried there. The winds changed in the city's favor Tuesday, casting the offensive odors seaward. Police closed three blocks of beach to give workers room. Spectators stood on trash cans and Boardwalk railings to get a better look. A bus from the Shores at Wesley Manor dropped off Alice Kistner and several other residents who wanted to see the marine mammal. Kistner, 89, said she always wanted to see a whale. "I never saw anything like that before. It's a sad thing," she said. Kim Wetzel, of Upper Township, brought her 7-yearold twins, Katy and Ricky, to the Boardwalk to see the whale. "They were sad that it died. I told them it had an accident," Wetzel said. "We definitely want to go to Sea World now. Contact Michael Miller: 609-463-6712 MMiller@pressofac.com  |
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