Federal wildlife officials are looking for whoever shot an 11-foot-long short-finned pilot whale at sea, leaving the animal struggling with its injury for a month or more before it beached itself in New Jersey and died.
If apprehended, the culprit faces up to a year in prison and a hefty fine.
“Sometimes what we find is, months down the road, you get a disgruntled crewmember on a boat, or someone who had an argument with someone else, and then you get a phone call,” Scott Doyle, an agent in charge of the National Marine Fisheries Service’s New Jersey, told the local press.
