Whales Are Dying Along the East Coast. And a Fight Is Surfacing Over Who ’ s to Blame

In mid-January, threatening social media messages started showing up on the accounts of a small New Jersey organization devoted to rescuing ocean mammals that wash up on the beach. Some said “we’re watching you.” Others accused staff of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center (MMSC) being “whale murderers.” Some people wrote that they were going to show up at the group’s Brigantine, N.J., headquarters and “make” members of the wildlife organization “come to [their] side.” “You don’t know what they’re gonna do,” says Michele Pagel, 49, the group’s assistant director. “Are they gonna march in here and put a gun to somebody’s head?” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Staff members contacted local police, and they started locking the doors to the group’s office. In late January, someone left the door unlocked, and a man burst into the office and approached the secretary. “He just starts [yelling], ‘I want to know, I demand to know,’” says Shelia Dean, 75, the group’s director. “He was very frightening.” Along with picking up sick baby seals and dolphins, the MMSC helps to carry out examinations on the bodies of dead whales when they wash up on the shores of New York and New Jersey in order to collect scientific data, and hopefully help determine a cause of death. And in recent months, whales have been washing up on these...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized climate change energy healthscienceclimate Nature & Science Oceans Source Type: news