Friday, a gray whale dead 50 feet on the ground at Huntington Beach, according to those responsible for Pacific Marine Mammal Center.
The cause of the death of the young adult woman is not yet known, said Glenn Gray, managing director of the non -profit organization at Laguna Beach. Center employees carried out a body necropsy on Saturday morning.
The whale had no sign of physical injury, said Gray. These brands are generally seen if a whale is struck by a boat, bitten by a shark or tangled in fishing equipment.
Body samples have been sent to a laboratory for tests.
“It can take a few weeks,” he said. “We will share with the public what we know.”
Scientists say that gray whales die in large numbers this year.
At least 70 whales are dead Since the start of the year in the Baja California lagoons in Mexico, where they have been in winter, according to Steven Swartz, a marine scientist who has been studying gray whales.
The whales are now going north to their food field in summer in the arctic and subarctic regions.
In recent weeks, three gray whales have died in the Bay of San Francisco.
Researchers do not know why a higher number of whales die. The bodies of some of the dead whales appeared exhausted and poorly fed, which led some scientists to believe that the problem could be a lack of food.
Alisa Schulman-Janiger, who led the chapter of Los Angeles to the gray census of the Whale of the American Cetacean Society at Rancho Palos Verdes since 1979, said that the number of whales that she and her volunteers observed the migration of the North this spring and the swimming of the south of last winter is the lowest ever recorded.
Earlier this month, a minke whale that spent days swimming in Long Beach Harbor deceased, despite the efforts of marine fauna experts to restart it in deeper waters.
Investigators at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were trying to determine what caused the death of the Whale Minke.
