A Staten Island Whale? 
Witut1Am T. Davis 
In the Richmond County Advance of March 2, 1920, is the 
following item: “A female porpoise, measuring nine and a half 
feet long and weighing 800 pounds, was captured this morning by 
several men off South Beach. The large denizen of the deep was 
evidently struck by the propeller of a ship, landed against a rock 
or participated in a fight under water, as it lost fifty-six quarts of 
blood after being hauled ashore.” 
“In the party who took the porpoise were John J. Shannon, of 
Bungalowtown; Clifford Townsend, of Camp Warren; Salvatore 
Balessie and William Maccopelas, of Ocean Bay. They hauled 
their prize to terra firma with the aid of a stout line after wading 
in the water, which was at low tide, for some distance off shore.” 
“The fish will be sent to Fulton Market, where it will be sold 
to merchants, who have arranged to buy it for the purpose of 
extracting the oil in its body and using its skin for other purposes.” — 
The animal here described was not a porpoise, but a Pigmy 
Sperm Whale, Kogia breviceps (Blainville), an inhabitant of warm 
seas and occasional on our coast. It was on exhibition, March 4, 
at the store of L. and F. Nagele, 408 Columbus Avenue, Man- 
hattan, and was said to weigh 850 pounds. It was measured and 
found to be 9 feet long. On the following day the whale was 
purchased by the American Museum of Natural History, and at 
the second annual meeting of the American Society of Mammal- 
ogists, held May 4, 1920, Messrs. C, L. Camp and James P. Chapin — 
presented a paper on “A Dissection of a Pigmy Sperm Whale 
(Kogia).” The specimen was a female, and a cast has been made 
of it for the American Museum. : 
1 Read at a meeting of the Nature Study Club March 8, 1920. 
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