1/2: The Marine Mammal Center confirms a dead gray whale washed ashore early this morning at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. Our scientists & partners plan to perform a necropsy, or animal autopsy, tomorrow in an attempt to determine the cause of death. ? Credit Sarah Maria Curran pic.twitter.com/6sDhSnhz8H
— The Marine Mammal Center (@TMMC) May 6, 2019
On May 6, Ocean Beach surfers were greeted by a grisly sight. A dead gray whale washed up on the famed San Francisco beach. It is the ninth dead whale the Bay Area has seen in the last two months.
According to reports, a beachgoer called the Marine Mammal Center at around 6:30 a.m. to report the whale. “The death of nine gray whales in the San Francisco Bay Area this year is a cause for serious concern and reinforces the need to continue to perform and share the results of these type of investigations with key decision-makers,” Dr. Padraig Duignan, the center’s chief research pathologist, said in a statement.
While the whale’s cause of death wasn’t known at the time of this report, a necropsy is taking place on May 7. The Marine Mammal Center said that three of the other dead whales died from ship strikes while four more died from malnutrition. The cause of death for the eighth is still under investigation.
The beach where the whale washed up is a highly-trafficked one, but Laura Sherr, a spokesperson for the Marine Mammal Center, says it’s completely okay for interested people to go and have a look.”So many people don’t have the opportunity to see a whale this way and in its full size,” Sherr told SF Gate on Monday afternoon. “It’s totally OK to go out and see it, but we ask for the public to not touch or alter the whale in any way so that scientists can complete their investigation tomorrow.”
