New Jersey Center Is One of Few That Aid Beached Whales, Porpoises Couple Devote Lives to Rescuing Imperiled Mammals of the Sea

Bob Schoelkopf got hooked on sea mammals one night in the murky depths of the main pool at the old Philadelphia Aquarama.

In 1968, the former Navy diver worked nights at the aquarium vacuuming the pool, where, by day, trained sea animals were put through their paces for audiences. One night, alone in the water--or so he thought--he sensed another presence.

“I could feel something,” Schoelkopf, 40, recalled. “I looked up, and there were four dolphins surrounding me, staring at me. One was a big bull.”

Moment of Fright

After an initial moment of sheer fright, Schoelkopf said, he discovered that the smart, playful dolphins had learned to unlatch the gate of their holding pen to free themselves and frolic in the pool during the night.

“I really became fascinated with their intelligence,” Schoelkopf said, describing how the dolphins would knock the vacuum hose from his hands and give him rides around the pool.

Schoelkopf recalled with a chuckle that his co-workers refused to believe that the dolphins returned to their pen and relatched the gate behind themselves before their human keepers returned in the morning.

That experience, for Schoelkopf, began a love affair with oceangoing mammals that culminated with his founding of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center. It is the only such facility in New Jersey and one of a few in the country devoted entirely to saving beached whales, porpoises, seals and other marine animals.

Quit as ‘Captain Bob’

That role is a far cry from his reign as “Captain Bob,” manager of the famed Steel Pier aquatic show on the Atlantic City Boardwalk--Schoelkopf’s next job after the Aquarama.

Coaxing animals through hoops in several performances a day and keeping them penned in sterile tanks eventually lost its appeal for Schoelkopf.

While working on Steel Pier, he was contacted several times by various shore communities when dead or sickly sea creatures washed up on their beaches.

By 1978, Schoelkopf decided to hang up his captain’s hat and devote himself full time to stranded marine life. With Sheila Dean, a former dolphin trainer who is now his wife, he officially opened the stranding center.

The private, nonprofit organization is licensed by the state and federal governments to rescue, rehabilitate and release stranded marine life along New Jersey’s 360 miles of coastline.

Victims of Plastic Debris

Since its creation, the center has handled more than 400 animals and received 66 reports of strandings last year. Many of the creatures are victims of boat propeller cuts or of ingested plastic debris. Schoelkopf grimly shows visitors a silver balloon he found in the intestinal tract of a whale.

State and local agencies, including police and the Coast Guard, are aware of the stranding center and call whenever an animal is found struggling or wounded in the surf or on the beach.

The center deals most often with sea turtles, which are not mammals. The turtles account for half of the center’s calls, and their recovery rate is 90%. Porpoises and whales are usually dead or half-dead at the time of recovery and have only a 1% recovery rate, the national average.

Seasonally, from January through April, the center rescues seals, mainly yearling pups that come from as far north as Canada in search of warmer waters and food. Seals have an 80% recovery rate.

Other Facilities

The facility is part of the Northeast Regional Stranding Network, one of five such networks along the coastal United States. The others are in Alaska, along the northern and southern Pacific coasts and the South Atlantic coast.

Thomas McIntyre, a marine specialist with the National Marine Fisheries Service, said that, although the federal government relies heavily on these networks, they receive no federal funds.

“We consider that those persons involved in this kind of work are doing an extremely valuable service, both in providing humane care to animals found stranded and alive and also in providing a real resource in working with the dead animals for scientific purposes and keeping the beaches clean,” McIntyre said.

The center consists of a tiny sea life museum, an administrative office and a rehabilitation building with an indoor pool on a bay in Brigantine, a barrier island community north of Atlantic City.

The city leases the land to the center for a dollar a year and the structures were built with donated materials and labor.

Sources of Funding

Besides Schoelkopf and Dean, the center is manned by volunteers and gets by on donations, memberships, fund-raising events and T-shirt sales.

The annual operating budget is $49,000, and there are times when the staff cannot sell enough T-shirts to pay the bills. Schoelkopf draws a weekly salary of $100, if the money is there. He works at odd jobs also. Dean works at three jobs to make ends meet.

He has a wish list for the center, and a larger pool is at the top of it.

Schoelkopf and his helpers firmly believe that 24-hour care of the animals is essential, and volunteers take turns in the pool, holding a baby whale that is too frail to float or just keeping an injured mammal company.

“They are gregarious in the wild and their family unit and family structure is so important,” volunteer Bob Solari, 38, said. “Bob (Schoelkopf) has developed a technique to try to duplicate it while they’re being rehabilitated.

‘It Makes You Feel Good’

“It’s so unbelievable,” Solari said. “You get into the pool with them and they’ll stay right next to you. They’re always close and they touch you. I can only theorize as to why they do that, but it makes you feel good. It gives you a whole different perspective on animals.”

The center tries to release a recovered animal in the vicinity of others of its kind. Once, for a rehabilitated harbor porpoise, the center chartered a plane, constructed a special carrying tank and flew the porpoise to Cape Cod, where other porpoises were known to be at the time.

The porpoise was taken to deeper waters in an inflatable boat and released.

All released animals are tagged or marked in some way, and officials up and down the coast are alerted that a rehabilitated animal has been released, so they can be on the lookout in case it strands itself again.

May Get State Aid

J. Edward Kline, a state assemblyman and mayor of Brigantine, has introduced legislation to give the center a one-time $30,000 stipend. Kline said his ultimate goal is to get permanent funding for the facility and perhaps even make it an arm of the state Department of Environmental Protection.

“When we had a seal or a whale wash up on the beach (before the center was established), we dug a hole and buried it,” Kline said. “That was it. It was history. Now, they’re calling Bob Schoelkopf from other states to help, because of his knowledge.”

Kline’s bill has been approved by the Assembly and is awaiting the consideration of the Senate.

Schoelkopf is on call 24 hours a day. He and his wife have not taken a vacation since they opened the center, partly because they are too poor but mainly because one of them always has to be at the center.

Almost Crushed by Whale

Schoelkopf almost lost a hand several years ago when an infected seal bit him. He has been thrown 10 feet into the air by the flip of a whale’s tail and has had a 40-foot, 20-ton dead whale roll on him in the surf.

Despite all that, he remains committed to his task.

“I just feel that, in 10 years, we’ve come a long way,” Schoelkopf said, “but it would be nice to know that we have secure funding, that we could do it the right way--a more professional way in keeping a staff and a (larger) pool and that sort of thing.

“What makes it all worth it is the animals,” he said.