Wednesday afternoon, a roughly 25-30 foot long young humpback whale washed ashore near Pillar Point just off of Highway 1 in Half Moon Bay.

According to witnesses on the beach yesterday, the young whale was first spotted around 3 p.m. when it was floating near Sam's Chowder House (home of The Today Show's favorite lobster roll) before it washed up on Surfer's Beach near an RV park next door.

One recreational vehicle resident told ABC7 he and his neighbors (themselves migratory mammals) were worried about the stench. "Everybody in the RV park is basically concerned about where it was going to end up and how it was going to smell up the place or whatever," Phil Ayala explained. "And everybody was stopping along the side of the road. It became quite an event. There were a couple of hundred people out here watching it."

Marine biologists from the California Academy of Sciences will check out the carcass today to determine how the young whale died. After the necropsy, the Pillar Point Harbor master will be responsible for disposing of the body and will likely tow it out to sea instead of trying to blow it up.

[ABC7]
[Chron]