A 52-foot-long fin whale — a juvenile female — washed up on the sand in Mission Beach early Sunday and was later towed out to sea. A federal fisheries official said it wasn’t immediately apparent why the whale died, but it appeared to have happened recently.
People began calling the stranding network hotline operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration after the whale was discovered on the beach, south of the Crystal Beach pier near Santa Rita Place. Lifeguards were notified around 7 a.m.

Fin whales are the second largest whales in the world — behind blue whales — and as adults can reach 70 to 80 feet long and weigh about 50 tons, or 100,000 pounds. They are endangered and thought to number around 8,000 off the West Coast, according to NOAA.

“It’s probably in the first couple years of its life,” said Michael Milstein, a spokesperson for NOAA Fisheries West Coast region. “It didn’t appear to have been dead very long because there wasn’t much evidence of scavenging or decomposition. But there was also no obvious sign of the cause of death.”