Dead whale washes ashore at Ocean Beach; onlookers decide to climb and kick it

A dead whale washed ashore on the north end of Ocean Beach on Monday.

Identified as a grey whale, the mighty carcass had a gash on its side which may indicate it was struck by the propeller of a ship.

This is the ninth grey whale to wash ashore in 2019. The Marine Mammal Center investigated the eight other gray whale deaths and determined that four died from malnutrition and three from ship strikes. A necropsy will be performed on the Ocean Beach gray whale on Tuesday morning, according to ABC 7 News.

The nine that have been found dead on Bay Area shores are just a fraction of the 30 gray whales that have been found up and down the coast of California in 2019. Most of them have died from malnutrition.

Scientists have a few theories for the rise in gray whale fatalities, ranging from changing food sources that cause poor body condition during migration, to climate changes in temperature that reset migratory routes and make food scarce for the whales. The gray whales have one of the longest migrations of any species as they swim from the Artic/Alaska down south to Baja, Mexico.

Adding insult to injury, some young men decided to climb on the dead gray whale at Ocean Beach and kick at it. ABC News 7 reporter Dion Lim, who was on the scene, expressed disgust in a Facebook post about their disrespect for the creature.

“I wanted to yell out for them to stop but they had been drinking & I didn’t want them to give me and my photographer any problems. Sigh,” Lim wrote on Facebook, alongside a photo showing one man crouching on top of the whale.

If you’re visiting Ocean Beach in the coming days, keep clear of the whale and let it naturally return to sea, or decompose. It’s best to also keep your dog leashed so they can avoid contact the whale carcass.

Sarah B.