Sad story. This whale washed up on shore & was then ‘tagged’ by someone under pier at Tennessee Ave in Atlantic City. pic.twitter.com/Nw0sAQZdW9

— FOX 29 (@FOX29philly) May 1, 2014

 

Philly Mag reports: The whale appears to be marked with the Greek letters Tau Epsilon Phi, a fraternity headquartered in Voorhees with three local chapters: Penn, Rutgers and Rowan.

The Marine Mammal Stranding Center hasn’t determined a cause of death yet, but whales wash ashore on New Jersey beaches relatively frequently. A dead dolphin was also found a few blocks from the whale; there is believed to be no connection. The whale was about 15 feet long.

The disrespect of this whale is mindblowing. “Tagging” is a form of graffiti used on areas like walls, not corpses; to the fratboys, the whale was nothing more than a wall or blank space for them to reclaim. Animals are not ours to claim.

Someone responded to the tweet something to the effect of, “Who cares, its trash!” Well I care, and I don’t agree that animals are trash. Animals cannot be trash because animals are not objects. Stop calling them “it.” Can you imagine if the story was about a dead companion animal who was found “tagged”? I highly doubt we’d read comments like, “Who cares, it’s trash!” in regards to a pet dog or cat. But this is just a whale, so who cares, right?

Sad.