 Blue whale found beached in Bolinas died from collision with ship 
 
 A 79-foot female blue whale carcass tumbles in the surf at Agate Beach in Bolinas. A team of three scientists from The Marine Mammal Center and California Academy of Sciences responded to the carcass Friday, May 26, 2017, to take initial measurements and tissue samples. The Center has previously responded to 8 blue whales in its 42-year history including a 65-foot blue whale at Westmoor Beach in Daly City in October 2016. less A 79-foot female blue whale carcass tumbles in the surf at Agate Beach in Bolinas. A team of three scientists from The Marine Mammal Center and California Academy of Sciences responded to the carcass Friday, ... more Photo: Courtesy: The Marine Mammal Center 
 
 Scientists from The Marine Mammal Center and California Academy of Sciences plan to perform a full necropsy tomorrow (Saturday) on a 79-foot female blue whale carcass that washed ashore Friday, May 26, 2017, at Agate Beach in Bolinas. “The opportunity to perform a necropsy on a carcass in this good of condition will help contribute to our baseline data on the species,” says Barbie Halaska, research assistant at The Marine Mammal Center. less Scientists from The Marine Mammal Center and California Academy of Sciences plan to perform a full necropsy tomorrow (Saturday) on a 79-foot female blue whale carcass that washed ashore Friday, May 26, 2017, at ... more Photo: Courtesy: The Marine Mammal Center 
 
 A team of three scientists from The Marine Mammal Center and California Academy of Sciences responded to a blue whale carcass at Agate Beach in Bolinas on Friday, May 26, 2017. less Where to see gray whales : Point Reyes National Seashore 
 
 The highest number of whales swim by Point Reyes in Dec. - Feb., but now's the time to see calves. The adult female blue whale was first reported dead on Agate Beach in Bolinas on Thursday and a team of 25 scientists and volunteers gathered today to perform a necropsy in order to determine how it died. We found 10 broken ribs and 10 fractured vertebrae near the tail and mid-body.” 
 
 Halaska said that although large whales are sometimes towed out to sea when they wash up on beaches, this one will be left on the beach to decompose, be eaten by birds and wash back into the ocean. Based on information about its unique fluke markings stored in a long-term photo-identification database, this whale was first identified in California in 1999 and has been seen in at least 11 different years, mostly in the Santa Barbara Channel area.
– Scientists from the Marine Mammal Center in northern California believe they’ve discovered the cause of death of a female blue whale that washed up on a Marin County beach Thursday, and it's a human one. Injuries found on the 79-foot whale during a necropsy conducted Saturday—including 10 broken ribs, a fractured spine, and a damaged skull—indicate that the mammal was struck by a ship, reports SFGate. A local scientist posted a graphic photo of the researchers examining what he called "blue whale road kill," writing, "only through teamwork can researchers @calacademy find the cause of death, but looks like it was a ship." Barbie Halaska tells the Mercury News some cargo ships wouldn’t even notice a collision with a 300,000-pound blue whale because "these are huge boats." "People who have come into port with whales on the bow of their ships have told us they had no idea," she says. SFGate calls whale-ship collisions a "leading cause" of death for the creatures; the Mercury News notes another blue whale that was struck washed ashore in the area just this October, though scientists say they more often sink to the ocean floor following a ship strike. This latest blue whale was well-known to researchers, having been first identified in 1999 and seen on 11 more occasions by the scientific community. Halaska says the research being conducted around its death can help change conditions for the future when it comes to things like shipping routes and speeds. (It turns out there's a simple reason why blue whales got so huge.)