FORT BRAGG, CA., 4/30/26 — A gray whale washed ashore Wednesday at Virgin Creek Beach in Fort Bragg, drawing scientists and researchers from local and out-of-town organizations.
By Thursday, visitors gathered at the site after news spread on social media. Samples of the whale had already been taken by researchers from Fort Bragg’s Noyo Center for Marine Science. A volunteer identified it as a subadult female, meaning it had not yet reached breeding age.
The volunteer said gray whales have been stranding in higher numbers along the West Coast in recent months, and researchers are working to determine the cause.
Around 3 p.m. Thursday, scientists from the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito arrived to conduct a necropsy, or animal autopsy, to determine the cause of death.
An informational display has been set up at the site.
We have one on the south beach in Point Reyes, ours has lots of great white bites taken out of it. It’s a ways south of the.parking lot so most tourists don’t go that far down.
Do you have Native American representatives present? Let then have it.
i don’t think the indians will want to eat that
That a gray whale washed ashore at all can’t be that shocking, right? We’d been seeing a die-off of whales along the Ca coast for some time. If this individual is known to not have bite marks on it from, say a shark or orca then it’s likely that this whale just …..died.
Is its belly full of plastics? Was it a boat strike? Was it a victim of entanglement? I’d say cut it up and put it back in the ocean so it can be consumed by wildlife like it’s supposed to be.
Propeller make on it, or shark bites
This is so unfortunate. It really makes my heart ache. I hope that they find out what happened to it. Plastic or some kind of accident
Terrible 😞
The cycle of life is a beautiful thing, all life was created to have a time on earth to enrich the nature around it. This death will teach us through science, just as its life fulfilled it’s purpose for whoever or whatever came in contact with it.
Don’t mourn its death, instead celebrate the time it had to bless the world around it.
I think it’s sad, especially if it died because of plastics or any other man made incident, for our oceans to be as big as they are, big mammals like whales n orcas are all starting to disappear, die off or what ever you want to call it, but there’s not as many as people would, and it’s all our faults, God blessed us to see these magnificent creatures and all man has done is kill them, that’s heartbreaking to say the least.