22-ton whale carcass towed from near Newport coast seems to be staying at sea

After twice towing a dead humpback whale out to sea to keep it from coming ashore, Newport Beach lifeguards said Tuesday that the 22-ton floating carcass appears to be staying away.

On Sunday, Newport lifeguards first saw the dead whale, named Wally by biologists who had tracked it before its death.

The 45-foot-long decaying mass was less than a mile off the Newport Pier and looked like it would soon wash up on the coast, according to lifeguard Battalion Chief Mike Halphide.

In response, lifeguards sent a rescue boat to tow Wally away from the beach.

But even after they dragged the body 14 miles south, winds pushed it back toward the pier.

On Monday, lifeguards saw the carcass again, this time about five miles offshore.

So the boat set out again, and after five hours of towing, the crew dropped off Wally’s remains about 10 miles south of the Newport Pier, Halphide said.

So far, the body hasn’t returned, according to lifeguards.

“It went well enough that when I got here this morning I didn’t see him,” Halphide said around 11 a.m. Tuesday. “As of right now, we believe Wally is still at sea.”

Wally’s body first grabbed headlines June 30 when it washed up on Dockweiler State Beach in Los Angeles County.

It’s unclear how the whale died, but marine biologists who examined the carcass clarified that Wally was actually a female who got her masculine name in August when she was tagged by the fisheries division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and misidentified as a male.

The day after the carcass washed ashore at Dockweiler, crews pushed it back into the ocean and two boats towed it out to where officials hoped the body would decompose naturally.

Newport Beach lifeguards are sticking to that plan, but Halphide said they’ll keep an eye out in case they need to repel Wally from the city’s beaches again.

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Jeremiah Dobruck, jeremiah.dobruck2@latimes.com

Twitter: @jeremiahdobruck