The body of a whale washed up on the beach in Encinitas and officials believe it could be the same “Wally” that floated up on Dockweiler Beach several weeks ago.
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Efforts to push his carcass out to sea have been thwarted, with his remains emerging back on various beaches every few days.
Lifeguards chose to hire a local contractor to remove the whale, rather than tow it out to sea for what Giles said would have been the sixth or seventh time.
That effort was to begin at 5 a.m. Monday during low tide.
“We didn’t leave any scraps”, said Encinitas Marine Safety Capt. Larry Giles, after the dead animal was cut up and hauled off. “We picked up everything we could”.
Wally the whale, as he has come to be known, first washed ashore before the Fourth of July weekend in Los Angeles.
The 45-foot long, 22-ton carcass washed ashore Saturday evening near the foot of the Grandview Beach stairs in Encinitas. Just a week later, the carcass drifted toward San Pedro and then Newport Beach, and has repeatedly drifted toward the shore despite being towed away multiple times.
Last year, photographers who caught up with Wally off the coast of Newport Beach captured footage of the whale as she went to the surface. There have been six previous attempts at towing the carcass offshore from the Los Angeles and Orange County coastline. Water expelled from her blowhole caught the light just so, creating a rainbow.
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