Giant 40-foot-long sea creature washes up in San Francisco Bay Area on its way north, a mystery

A 40-foot-long gray whale carcass washed up on the coast of California, the first whale death in the Bay Area this year.

The giant mammal was spotted floating in the water near Alameda on Sunday morning, a day after it became trapped in a sandbar.

It was identified as an adult female, about 40 feet long, and a crowd of onlookers gathered on the nearby shore. It also attracts the attention of local wildlife, including a colony of seabirds who have settled to feast on its blubber.

California RepresentativeThe Academy was spotted cruising on a ship to collect DNA samples.

Officials are now scrambling to determine the cause of its demise, following an ominous wave of mass casualties several years ago.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Coast Guard will help move the body to Angel Island State Park for an autopsy. Preliminary findings show there were no obvious signs of a boat strike or net entanglement.

The whale died while traveling north on its way to Alaska for summer feeding.

The eastern gray whale’s range extends from the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort Seas to the southern Gulf of California and Baja.

Each year, they migrate south along the U.S. West Coast to Mexico, breed and give birth to live calves, and then return north during the warmer months, each round trip up to 12,000 miles.

The female whale is just one of many that have died on the West Coast in the past few years.

Last year, seven gray whales were stranded in the Bay Area, three of which were suspected to have been killed by ship strikes.

The deaths of nearly 700 gray whales between 2019 and 2023 prompted the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to declare an “unusual mortality event,” which refers only to significant die-offs in marine mammal populations.

Global gray whale populations, including those in the western North Pacific, have been declining for decades.

Commercial whaling has triggered catastrophic declines in whale populations, forcing some species to become extinct.

Although eastern gray whale numbers continue to decline, their numbers have rebounded significantly and currently number about 20,000.

However, it faces new threats, including climate change, as shrinking Arctic ice reserves impact food sources and lead to starvation.

Eastern gray whales are also at increased risk due to the presence of humans in their waters. Trauma from entanglement in fishing nets and vessel strikes remains the two biggest causes of whale mortality.

Other factors, such as algal blooms, may also contribute to population declines. When excess nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizers, wastewater and stormwater runoff enter the ocean, it can cause algae to grow rapidly.

Toxins produced by algae can affect the central nervous systems of fish and other vertebrates. When whales hunt prey, toxins build up in their bodies and can be fatal.

Western gray whales, which live in the waters off the Russian island of Sakhalin, face imminent threats due to offshore oil and gas development in their feeding areas.

They face a more uncertain future than their eastern counterparts, who number in the hundreds. However, a coalition of scientists and shareholders has been working hard to protect the remaining population.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature has been working with Russian oil and gas company Sakhalin Energy since 2004.

The organization’s Western Gray Whale Advisory Group, composed of 11 top scientists, disbanded in 2021.

Its goal is to provide guidance on the conservation of endangered whales in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk and advise energy companies on best practices in the coming years.