Watch: A Huge Beached Gray Whale is Fighting for its Life in San Diego

Jade Eckardt
·2 min read
18

A 24-foot juvenile gray whale washed ashore yesterday at La Jolla Shores in Southern California.

By the end of the day, the whale was still alive and officials were outlining a rescue plan.

Several other beached whales made the news in the last few months, including a 50-foot fin whale in the UK, a shark-bitten whale in Southern California, and a 30-foot gray whale in Huntington Beach.

Related: Bird's the Word: Watch a Surfing Swan Get a Really Good Wave in Spain

CBS 8 San Diego captioned the video above:

"A young gray whale washed up at La Jolla Shores near the Marine Room restaurant Thursday afternoon, according to San Diego Lifeguards.

"A lieutenant with the Lifeguards also said the whale is in a shallow, low-tide area. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tells CBS 8 the whale is roughly 24-feet long and still alive.

"The agency went to La Jolla Shores to assess the situation and determine whether the juvenile whale could return to the ocean on its own.

"A NOAA spokesperson tells CBS 8 the agency will return to where the whale was stranded at dawn Friday. NOAA will determine next steps if the young whale is still beached in the wait-deep water."

Here’s more from NOAA about gray whales’ migration:

“Gray whales make one of the longest annual migrations of any mammal, traveling about 10,000 miles round-trip and in some cases upwards of 14,000 miles. On their migration routes, they face threats from vessel strikes, entanglement in fishing gear, and other sources of disturbance.”

Since 2019, over 680 gray whale strandings have occurred along the west coast of North America from Mexico through Alaska. This event has been declared an Unusual Mortality Event (UME).

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