Porpoise Rescued from Keansburg Creek, Led Back out to Atlantic Ocean

Keansburg, NJ - The adorable porpoise that delighted hundreds of visitors to a tiny Keansburg Creek is back swimming in the Atlantic Ocean — and that's exactly where she belongs, say the marine mammal experts who rescued her.

The female Harbor Porpoise was first spotted by onlookers swimming in Waackaack Creek Thursday evening. She was likely part of a pod of porpoises that swam up the creek chasing herring, experts said. The rest of the porpoises swam back out again, but she became disoriented and stayed behind.

Keansburg police were called to the scene to monitor her, as were experts from the Marine Mammal Stranding Center (MMSC) in Brigantine. With each high tide, everyone expected the porpoise to swim back out to Raritan Bay. But she stayed put, swimming back and forth in the shallow, narrow creek.

By Saturday morning, Bob Schoelkopf, director of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center, knew something had to be done.

"We finally got approval from the law enforcement division of the National Marine Fisheries Service to move her," he told Patch.

With Keansburg police standing nearby, MMSC volunteers in kayaks carefully approached the porpoise Saturday morning. Using nets, they guided her into a specially-made container Schoelkopf created just for this purpose: A pen to move marine mammals.

"It's a 5-foot by 3-foot wide, white, fiberglass old lifeboat container," he said. "The inside is covered in foam so it's nice and comfortable for the animal to lie down. The porpoise probably weighed 40 to 50 pounds, and the container itself only weighs about 20 pounds, so the whole thing was pretty light."

"It was very easy for our volunteers to coax her into the container," he added. "They don't fight getting in, like seals do."

The bulk of MMSC rescues are injured seals found on New Jersey beaches.

The container was taken out of the water, as porpoises breathe air, and driven the 15 to 20 minutes in a 4-wheel drive to Sandy Hook park.

"We drove the four-wheel drive down to the beach, carried it to the water's edge and she leaped right out and swam away, into the ocean," Schoelkopf said. "She's where she belongs now."

He said the porpoise, estimated to be about 2-3 years old, seemed healthy and in good condition. The biggest danger to her was the hundreds of people who gathered along Waackaack Creek to see her Friday and Saturday, he said.

"We did have some people in a canoe in the area, and we had to have the police call them off," he said. "There were just too many people."

What if that had been a shark swimming in Waackaack Creek?

"We wouldn't have done anything," Schoelkopf said. "Sharks aren't a protected species, which Harbor Porpoises are. It's a fish. We would have just let it swim there."

Read the original story on the dolphin in Keansburg here.

All photos of the porpoise in Waackaack Creek courtesy of Gonzalo Cruz.