Dead Gray Whale spotted off Alameda beach over weekend

ALAMEDA, Calif. - Beachgoers in Alameda were met with a sad and unpleasant sight Sunday after a dead Gray Whale was spotted off Robert W. Crown Memorial State Beach. 

According to The Marine Mammal Center, it marks the first reported whale death in the Bay Area this year.  

"I didn’t know it was a whale at first. I just thought it was a rock at first," said Geo Mack, who was at the beach with his family.

"I feel…bad for the whale, because it is dead, and its life is over," said a child nearby.

The female Gray Whale was first spotted on Saturday evening, possibly stuck on a sandbar. Researchers from the California Academy of Sciences collected initial samples from the carcass on Sunday but said that a full necropsy wouldn't be able to be completed until the whale was removed from the water. 

"We couldn’t really determine anything today," said Moe Flannery a senior collections manager for birds and mammals at the California Academy of Sciences. "There were no obvious signs of death."

The U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are expected to help tow the whale to Angel Island State Park, likely sometime on Monday. 

Flannery said the most common causes of death for Gray Whales include poor nutrition, boat strikes and entanglements with netting. 

The Marine Mammal Center said the whale is not the same one spotted several weeks ago, entangled in fishing gear while making its way up the Southern California Coast.