Ilya back home

Ilya, the manatee that made trips to the Chesapeake Bay and New England before being trapped in a tiny New Jersey creek, is back in Miami.

Delaware River whales, sharks and monsters

From the Universal York blog, this post on a whale displayed in a York County barn belonging to one Samuel Spangler sometime in the first half of the 1800s. The whale is described as having been caught in the Delaware River. This wouldn't be unheard of.

The Philadelphia Inquirer (December 6, 1994) reported that a 30-foot right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) dubbed "Waldo the Wrong-Way Right Whale" was found in the Delaware between Philadelphia and New Jersey. Wildlife officials managed to point it back towards the sea, but in early 1995 the whale had returned and was beached temporarily at an oil refinery near Pennsauken, New Jersey. "Waldo" was last seen in waters off Canada.

In April, 2005, NBC's Today carried reports on a beluga whale that had been seen around Trenton and Beverly, New Jersey. The animal was identified as one called Helis, whose native territory was in the St. Lawrence River. Helis had left the Delaware Bay around April 18, but by the 29th he was back in the river near Burlington Island. He was later seen near the Walt Whitman Bridge moving south. There were a few reports of the beluga from the Schuylkill River, but I don't know whether these were confirmed. By the end of the month, he had again moved out of the river.

The New York Times (May 1, 1922) reported that a 12-foot shark "said to have been of the man-eating variety" was killed by Joseph Fletcher in Tacony, Pennsylvania.

Several species of sharks live in the Delaware Bay and may make their way up the river; the Tacony shark is most likely to have been a bull shark. Other dangerous species such as the hammerhead and thresher exist in the Bay, but these prefer open waters and would not likely be found upstream. The bull shark is also the likely culprit in the attacks at Matawan, New Jersey in 1916.

The book Totally Bizarre Pennsylvania mentions a sighting of a supposed sea monster near the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in August, 1975. Peter Evangelidis reported that he and his girlfriend were along the river at Penn's Landing when he saw what he first thought to be a "bunch of black inner tubes or tires floating down the river, about 30 yards out" but that was moving against the current of the river. After a moment there was a violent splash and "this sleek head of an animal that should not have existed sprung its head out of the dark river no more than 30 feet from us". A canal cuts across Delaware, joining the Chesapeake Bay to the Delaware Bay. Evangelidis wondered whether the Chesapeake Bay sea serpent, Chessie, could have made it through the waterway and into Philadelphia. 1975 also saw reports of both sharks and whales from the Delaware, so it conceivably could have been one of these.

The above is the photo Evangelidis took of the creature.

A bit more on the Trenton gator

The article appearing in the September 3, 2009 edition of the Trentonian, which was captured in the Trenton, NJ's Stacy Park, contains a quote from Jose Munoz, an animal control officer employed by the city, who noted that the alligator seen in the waters of the Log Basin was larger than the one captured. He said that several witnesses, as well, felt that the caged alligator was not the same one they had seen in the waters - the city's plan was to reset the cage traps after removing the reptile in case there was another one present.

An alligator in Allentown

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on September 10 that an alligator had been found in Allentown, Pennsylvania:

One week after a 4-foot alligator was snared in a Trenton pond, a much larger cousin was caught in Allentown.

Early yesterday afternoon, a passerby reported seeing a 6-foot gator sunning itself on the bank of Jordan Creek in a busy park with a playground, basketball courts and baseball fields.

"We formulated a little bit of plan," said Police Capt. Stephen Mould. "I think it was based primarily on what we watched with The Crocodile Hunter" - the TV series hosted by Steve Irwin before the Aussie was killed by a stingray's barb.

After the gator's neck was snared in a loop of rope at the end of a pole, one of the police or animal control officers straddled the creature and forced its head down as it thrashed its tail. Tape secured the jaws, rope the legs.

"He looks healthy. He's nice and fat and sassy," said Gary Lee, a reptile lover from Emmaus, who said he'd probably keep it in a bathtub until he could find a home, perhaps at a Poconos reptile farm.

The critter, probably an abandoned or escaped pet, seemed to be about 10 to 15 years old, Lee told the Allentown Morning Call.

It was estimated to weigh about 130 pounds.

The Trenton gator, recovered by state biologists on Sept. 2, was lured into a big trap using chicken legs and chicken livers, according to Darlene Yuhas, spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

The Matawan maneaters: a New Jersey horror

On the evening of July 1, 1916, Charles Vansant was swimming in the surf off Beach Haven in Ocean County (New Jersey) when he was attacked by a shark, which stripped the flesh from his left thigh. He died about an hour later. The second attack took place on July 6, when Charles Bruder was attacked off Spring Lake; he bled to death before the lifeguards even returned him to shore. But for all this, the horror was about to come even closer to home.

On July 12, 12-year old Lester Stillwell and other boys were playing at the Wyckoff Dock on Matawan Creek near the town of Matawan, some 16 miles inland. While there, the boys saw an 'old black weather-beaten board or a weathered log' which turned out, unfortunately, to be a shark. Stillwell was pulled underwater and killed; people attempted to rescue the boy. One of these, Watson Fisher, was also killed by the shark as he swam in search of the boy's body. Half an hour later and a half mile away, another young boy, Joseph Dunn, was attacked by a shark, but survived.

An 8-foot long great white shark was killed by Michael Schleisser in Raritan Bay near the mouth of Matawan Creek. It was widely reported that Schleisser's kill was the maneater, although differing opinions surfaced - in 1916, Barrett Smith wrote that it could have been a sea turtle, rather than a shark - an odd theory, to be sure. In modern times, biologists Richard Ellis and George Llano both feel that the shark may have been a bull shark (which can survive in fresh water) although ichthyologist George Burgess notes that Matawan Creek was extremely brackish and a great white may still be to blame.

The Wooo-Wooo and the Delaware Water Gap Hooter

On April 13, 1968 the Blairstown (NJ) Press reported on somehting encountered by zoologist and author Ivan T. Sanderson at his farm near Columbia, NJ (in Warren County). Sanderson and Walter McGraw heard a strange hooting cry. Both Sanderson and McGraw felt the sound was emanating from a large bird they saw flying along the Kittatinny Mountain. A similar cry came moments later from the opposite bank of the Delaware River. Mark A. Hall writing in Thunderbirds! The Living Legend of Giant Birds has called this creature the "Wooo-Wooo" after the mens' description of the sound and feels it is a representative of his hypothetical "Bighoot", a giant owl.

Pocono Ghosts, Legends and Lore by David J. Seibold and Charles J. Adams III reports on the presence in the Delaware Water Gap area (on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware opposite Sanderson's home) of a creature called the "Hooter", which has been heard by hunters and hikers in the woods. It can be theorized that the second call Sanderson heard may have been the Hooter.