Massive 68-foot whale washes ashore on California beach, officials say

A massive dead fin whale washed up on a Southern California beach this week.

The adult female fin whale was found Wednesday evening washed up on Bolsa Chica State Beach in Orange County and will be taken to a landfill, California State Parks representative Kevin Pearsall told McClatchy News.

“We are going to remove it,” said Pearsall told the Los Angeles Times. “We’re not even going to bury it because it’s so big. It will be removed by a designated removal company that takes it to a landfill.”

The whale measures around 68 feet, public affairs officer Michael Milstein for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told McClatchy News.

Pearsall told McClatchy that the whale will be removed Friday morning and is the largest he’s seen this year and “probably the second-largest” of his career.

The fin whale is the second-largest whale after the blue whale species and can grow up to 75 to 85 feet long, according to the NOAA.

The fin whale is endangered and vessel strikes are one of the biggest threats to the animals, according to the NOAA. There are around 3,200 fin whales off the coast of California, Oregon and Washington.

Krysta Higuchi, public relations manager of the Pacific Marine Mammal Center, said the whale is believed to be the adult female whale that was killed along with her calf by an Australian Royal Navy vessel off the San Diego coast and were found earlier in May, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“But we’re trying to take this sad incident and gather as much research and knowledge as we can, trying to get more metrics and life history of this animal. We don’t normally get this opportunity to get these types of samples from these animals,” Higuchi said.

This story was originally published May 21, 2021 at 12:00 PM with the headline "Massive 68-foot whale washes ashore on California beach, officials say."