Dead Gray Whale Calf Washes Onshore North Of Bodega Bay

BODEGA BAY - A dead gray whale calf was found washed up on a beach north of Bodega Bay on Monday.

The Marin County-based Marine Mammal Center was alerted that a whale carcass had washed up on Salmon Creek Beach on Monday morning, center spokesman Giancarlo Rulli said.

A team from the center went out to investigate and discovered a male juvenile gray whale dead and thrashing in the surf.

It was too far out in the waves for the team to inspect it carefully, and Marine Mammal representatives would have needed special permission to access the beach because the location is a protected area for snowy plovers, Rulli said.

By the time they returned Tuesday, the whale carcass had drifted back out to sea.

Without performing a necropsy, the team could tell little about the whale or how it died, but did identify it as a male juvenile gray whale and noticed it had an injury to the left side of its jaw.

Many whales are migrating off the California coast right now, including gray whales, humpback whales and even some blue whales, Rulli said.

According to BigSurCalifornia.org, California Gray Whales migrate south from December to early February along the Big Sur coastline.

On their northern migration to Alaska beginning in mid-February, the whales swim close to shore, with their babies on the shore side, according to the website. BigSurCalifornia.org says this is to protect them from attacks from Great White Sharks.

The Marine Mammal Center asks boaters in the area to keep their distance if they see whales.

-Bay City News, generic image of gray whale via José Eugenio Gómez Rodríguez and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.