Young Whale Buried; Boat May Have Caused Gash
A dead young blue whale that washed ashore on Huntington Beach on Thursday evening may have been hit by a boat, but officials said that since it has already been buried, they’ll never know for certain.
The whale had a gash in its side, but it’s not clear that the injury caused its death, said Dennis Kelly, head of the marine sciences department at Orange Coast College.
The 40-foot whale, which experts estimated was 6 months old and weighed 40 tons, was quickly buried because it was decomposing and stank.
“This whale had been dead for weeks,” said Lt. Kyle Lindo, a Huntington Beach lifeguard supervisor.
“There is an outside chance it was hit by a Navy ship,” Kelly said, referring to two times in the past two weeks in which Navy vessels have struck whales off the San Diego County coastline. “We’ll probably never know one way or the other.”
The whale was buried at least 10 feet under sand on Huntington Beach early Friday, close to the spot where it washed ashore.
Lifeguards first spotted the whale late Thursday afternoon and watched it drift onto the sand about 6:30 p.m.
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