Young gray whale dies off Southern California despite being freed from fishing gear

Gray whale dies after week off Southern California

LOS ANGELES — A young gray whale that captured public concern as it spent the week in and near a Southern California harbor died Friday and washed onto a beach.

The approximately 30-foot-long California gray died about 4 p.m. off Doheny State Beach, just south of Orange County’s Dana Point Harbor, said Joe Cordaro, a biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The carcass of the huge animal that had been named Lily was rolling in shallows as waves struck it.

The whale dropped out of the California gray whales’ northward migration and was found swimming listlessly at Dana Point on Monday.

Whale experts discovered that it was entangled in fish netting and rope. The entanglements were cut away Wednesday and the whale appeared to head out to sea, but it was back by Thursday.

Cordaro said the whale’s emaciated condition indicated it hadn’t been feeding and he hoped to arrange a necropsy to determine the cause of death.

“I think that it pretty much just starved to death. What we don’t know is was it suffering from any disease,” he said.

An examination might also help to establish the age of the whale, which was estimated at 1 year based upon its length, Cordaro said.

Disposal of the carcass is the responsibility of the state park, he said.

California gray whales migrate annually between a lagoon in Baja California and the arctic.

The young whale would have been in the tail end of the northward migration.

Cordaro said eight to 10 grays die during migrations, and sometimes as many as 15.

“It’s just random where they die,” he said.

The California gray whale, which is no longer on the endangered species list, has a population of about 18,000. About 1,100 die each year in normal mortality, Cordaro said.

“We think it’s a healthy population,” he said.

Still, the plight of whales off course or in distress elicits public sympathy.

In 1997 a nearly dead 1,670-pound infant female California gray was rescued from the surf at Los Angeles. Initially nourished on a milk formula, “J.J.” was raised for 14 months by experts at Sea World in San Diego. Fattened to 19,000 pounds, she was returned to the ocean in 1998, shed tracking transmitters and vanished.