In the fifth such incident since April, a "badly decomposed" whale turned up on a Bay Area beach late Wednesday, this one at the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge.
East Bay Regional Park District spokesperson Carolyn Jones says that the 25-foot-whale washed up on the beach about 150 to 200 yards south of the Alameda Creek Channel and north of the Dumbarton Bridge.
National Marine Sanctuaries, Gulf of the Farallones spokesperson Mary Jane Schramm tells KTVU that the whale is "a gray whale, possibly born earlier this year."
Jones tells CBS5 that the carcass is in "an area inaccessible to the public and the current plan is to leave it where it is and let it decompose."
"We had a lot of whales washing up on shore," Schramm tells KTVU, and she's right: This week's dead whale is at least the fifth that has washed up in the Bay Area in the last six months, according to the Chron.
According to CBS5, El Nino might be partially to blame, as the weather conditions have "disrupted whales’ food supply, leading to an increase in whale sightings and instances of whales beaching themselves."
The Marine Mammal Center was scheduled to perform a necropsy on this week's dead whale Thursday afternoon, the Chron reports. At publication time, the results of that investigation had yet to be released to the public.
