Sad End for ‘Sludgie’

Mom always said: "Never follow a school of fish into the Gowanus."

Bucci submitted the following news, A Sad End for ‘Sludgie’ from the Park Slope Courier:

04/21/2007
A sad end for ‘Sludgie’ by Tom Tracy
All eyes were on the Gowanus Canal Tuesday morning when a baby Minke whale was spotted swimming along the Brooklyn tributary, with some guessing: “Could he be house hunting?”

But the delight people felt at the site was short lived. The 15-foot whale, nicknamed “Sludgie” by some, died after swimming into the shallow end of the canal near Clinton Street at 5 p.m. Wednesday evening. As this paper was going to press, officials for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were planning a necropsy for Thursday morning.

Some, however, predicted that the exciting sight would have a sad end. “In general, when animals are unexpectedly in an area where they’re not supposed to be, they’re either following something like food or there’s something wrong with them,” Teri Frady, a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration told New York Newsday.

The whale was first spotted Tuesday by workers at a waterfront cement company owned by John Quadrozzi Jr., who at first thought the canal’s latest attraction was a porpoise. “Then we could see he was much bigger,” Quadrozzi said. Officials from the U.S. Coast Guard and the New York Department of Environmental Conservation were called to see if Minke was in distress, but said that they didn’t see any signs of trauma. Crews stayed at the scene well into Wednesday, hoping that the whale would head out to open sea on his own.

By the second day, there were growing concerns that the Gowanus’ latest tenant was having difficulty navigating the shallow waters. Witnesses saw the whale swimming around in circles trying to find a way out of the canal. Officials from the New York Aquarium in Coney Island speculate that Sludgie got stuck in Brooklyn after following a school of fish into the Gowanus.