October 15, 2022
A Wednesday fishing trip for 23-year-old Zach Piller and his father off the Jersey Shore near Belmar became a memory of a lifetime when a humpback whale leaped out of the water and was level with the boat the Pillers cast rods from.
With his camera out, an ecstatic Piller can be heard saying, "I got that on video," as the whale breached and hit the side of the boat.
As a school of small fish formed in the middle of the water, a whale suddenly appeared, making a huge splash, literally and figuratively.
Piller said that there are a lot of small fish in the area this time of the year, and they usually attract whales, just not that close to boats.
According to Eric Otjen, vice president of zoological operations at SeaWorld San Diego, there is a better chance of winning the lottery than a whale popping up like that, so close to a boat.
"The guys on that boat had the experience of a lifetime," Otjen said. "A lot of people would pay a lot of money to see what they saw."
Whales breach to get rid of parasites and sometimes barnacles especially humpback whales. The barnacles add extra weight, which according to the blog 7 Seas Whale Watch, is like wearing clothes for a human.
They also breach to help with the digestion of their feasts, and whales eat a lot of fish daily. The average humpback whale weighs at least 55,000 pounds and consumes thousands of pounds of fish a day.
And like every other living creature, whales like to enjoy themselves sometimes, they breach just for the fun of it.
An NJ.com article from July said that once a rarity, Jersey waters now see whales more frequently.
According to a study from Rutgers, between 2012 and 2018, there were 101 whale sightings between the Long Island and New Jersey coast. The study found that whales seen on the Jersey Shore and New York waters averaged 37.6 days in the water and were often seen more than once.
Since those numbers were calculated, there have been 156 more whale sightings bringing the total in the area to 257 since 2012.
According to researchers, the increase in whales in the area could be due to multiple things, the impact of climate change, but also a type of herring whales feed on is prevalent in the water off the Jersey Shore and in New York.
As the humpback sightings became more normal, a Belmar photographer, Bill McKim, began offering whale-watching tours in 2018. A three-hour tour costs $59 for adults, $35 for children ages 3-14, and $45 for seniors 65 and older.
