A dead gray whale washed up on a beach in Alameda on Saturday night, becoming the first reported whale death in the San Francisco Bay Area this year.
The California Academy of Sciences initially reported the whale floating off the coast of Robert W. Crown Memorial State Beach, according to a statement shared by the Marine Mammal Center. The whale may have been stuck in mud or a sandbar, but by early Sunday morning had dislodged and was floating freely with the tide.
The whale is an adult female gray whale estimated to be about 40 feet long. Cal Academy was able to get close enough via boat for observation and collected blubber samples and measurements. It is not the same whale that was entangled in a gill net off the coast of San Francisco two weeks ago.