VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — A young whale has washed up dead in Virginia.
The juvenile humpback came ashore on the north end of Virginia Beach, along the Atlantic Ocean and just south of the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay near 54th Street.
The whale may have been the same animal that someone spotted floating near the bay's mouth earlier in the week.
Alexander Costidis of the Virginia Aquarium said the whale was "pretty decomposed."
He said the whale was tossed around in the waves so much that there wasn't much left inside the animal to test for a cause of death. But he said that a ship strike was unlikely.
The mammal was 26 feet long and was probably between 2 and 3 years old.
NOAA has maintained historic stranding data of humpback whales washing up along the east coast.
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