Fifth whale washes up dead in San Francisco Bay in less than a month

A dead whale was discovered on a beach near Fort Funston on Friday, the fifth deceased whale to be found around San Francisco Bay in less than a month.

April is the start of gray whales' northern migration, so finding dead whales on the shores of the bay is not unusual, but after four were found in the span of nine days just a few weeks ago, experts began to worry.

"It's concerning," Giancarlo Rulli of the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito had said. "The fact that we've responded to four dead gray whales ... is concerning."

A video of the fifth dead whale was post to Twitter:

The first dead whale to be found was a 41-foot adult female gray whale at Crissy Field on March 31. That animal was towed to Angel Island for a necropsy. The cause of death was unclear — pathologists with the Marine Mammal Center found that the whale's condition was good, no illnesses were found, and in fact, the whale had a full stomach from a recent feeding, ruling out starvation or malnutrition.

The second, another adult female, was found April 3 at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve at Moss Beach. "That animal's cause of death, we suspect, was ship strike," Rulli said. "Our plan is to eventually head back out to that whale and take more samples."

A third dead gray whale was found in the Berkeley Marina on April 7, after moving around the bay on the changing tide. That animal was also towed to Angel Island and was being inspected near the remains of the first.

The fourth dead gray whale was discovered the next morning, April 8, at Muir Beach.

In 2019, at least 13 dead whales washed ashore in the Bay Area and scientists said they feared it was because...