Fatal shooting of whale

Rescuers knew something was seriously wrong with a short-finned pilot whale when it beached itself along the New Jersey shore. Looking thinner that it should have been, the whale only weighed approx 740 pounds.

It died shortly after being found, but it wasn't until a necropsy was performed that the shocking cause of death was revealed. Someone had shot the whale and it died from an infection in its jaw that prevented it from eating. The wound, which was near the blow hole, had closed and faded somewhat, indicating the animal had been shot as long as a month before and it had literally starved to death. Who would do that to an innocent animal? Whales are protected by the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act, and if found, the guilty party can be fined up to $100,000 and sent to prison for a year. The whale could have been shot anywhere on the East Coast, given the amount of time that it spent losing weight before dying. Authorities think the bullet, which was recovered from the animals' jaw, came from a 30-caliber rifle.

Fishermen commonly carry guns to shoot large sharks they catch before bringing them aboard boats.There have been no other reports of whales being shot on the East Coast, but there remains an active investigation into the fatal shootings of several grey seals in Massachusetts earlier this year. According to the national Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, there are about 31,000 pilot whales (both long and short-finned) in the western north Atlantic Ocean, with an additional 300 or so off the West Coast of the United States (about 8,800 in Hawaii and 2,400 in the northern Gulf of Mexico).