People gather near Fort Stevens State Park along the northern Oregon Coast on Saturday, March 21. A dead whale, the second in less than a week, was located along this part of the coast the park on Wednesday Jan. 18, 2023.
Todd Sonflieth / OPB
For the second time in less than a week, another whale carcass has washed ashore on the northern Oregon Coast, just about 100 yards from where the first body was found Saturday.
Both whales were beached along the coast at Fort Stevens State Park, near the Peter Iredale shipwreck.
The Seaside Aquarium says the one that beached Wednesday was a baby gray whale, about 12-feet long.
There’s no indication the whale was hit by a vessel or died from any interaction with humans. But officials have not yet investigated the cause of death.
The sperm whale found on shore last weekend had been killed in a ship strike, according to the West Coast Marine Mammal Stranding Network.
Aquarium officials say both whales had been dead for quite a while before they washed in.
Separately, last Wednesday another whale washed up on the Oregon Coast 200 miles to the south near Reedsport, according to a report by KGW.
A team performs a necropsy on the carcass of a sperm whale on the northern Oregon Coast on Monday, Jan. 16, 2023. The body washed ashore two days earlier and the necropsy will determine the whale's cause of death.
Courtesy NOAA Fisheries