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That sighting occurred a day after an 18-foot gray whale swam in the shallow waters from 1st Place to 72nd Place.

Over the weekend, a 38-foot-long female gray whale washed ashore at Dockweiler State Beach, prompting an outpouring of grief from marine mammal lovers and leaving an important question etched into the sand — what killed her?

"These impacts extend indirectly to a top predator, the gray whale, and it affects them in a negative way."

He recounts a gruesome attack, seen in “Lower California,” by a trio of killer whales on a gray whale and her baby.

Joshua Stewart, a quantitative ecologist at Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute, who was not an author on the paper, estimates the gray whale population was reduced by half during the most recent mortality event.