Mourning Creatures' Loss to Sandy

The beaches are still pretty barren in Sea Bright.

And, more than six months after Hurricane Sandy's wrath, as residences and businesses have been rebuilding and the beach has been slowly and nearly brushed back where it belongs, remnants of Sandy sporadically wash onto the shore.

What people find when walking on scantily traversable sand is often a brazen reminder of a loss less often thought of — animals and sea creatures that couldn't survive the storm's toxic tide or what it left behind in its wake.

On treks down the beach in Sea Bright since Sandy, a Patch friend and animal lover found a couple of remnants of that loss that made her and us saddened by the notion that nature can sometimes be very cruel in a survival-of-the-fittest world.

What she and we wonder, though, is just what these likely victims of Sandy are. Most recently, a large fish was found, which a reader informed us was an Atlantic sturgeon, a true dinosaur of the ocean indigenous to the Delwaware Bay that tends to migrate in clusters to New Jersey, according to nj.com. The threatened species dates back 100 million years to the age of the dinosaur.

This one could have been a victim of the toxins dredged up or kicked into the shore waters with Sandy or something else. It is, however, a victim.

Do you know what the other creatures could be?

Regardless, this is a call to remember and honor less realized victims of Sandy.

Peace to the animals lost.