A 44-foot dead grey whale washed up on Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay Wednesday morning.
Team members from the Marine Mammal Center and the California Academy of Sciences performed a necropsy on the whale around noon to determine the cause of death was blunt force trauma.
They report the whale's injuries are consistent with a vessel collision.
"It was apparent early in the necropsy that this adult whale suffered significant blunt force trauma," said Dr. Padraig Duignan, Chief Research Pathologist at The Marine Mammal Center. "While this is a sad outcome, the information gathered from this carcass is shared directly with our partners and partner agencies, helping inform policy decisions that can protect habitat areas, migration routes and food sources for marine mammals."
The Center's rescue team first heard about the whale on Friday afternoon after people saw it floating near the shoreline south of the Bay Bridge. The carcas eventually made it to the Angel Island beach.
No additional information was immediately available.
