The body of the world’s second largest type of whale has washed up on a beach.
Beachgoers at Cefn Sidan, in Carmarthenshire, contacted Marine Environmental Monitoring on Monday, with reports of a very large stranding.
When the fin whale was seen by the environmental team the following day they said “it had been dead for some time” and as a result was “in a bad state of decomposition”.
Earlier on Monday, a 12-month-old long-finned pilot whale had died after becoming stranded on a beach.
Marine Environmental Monitoring said there had only been four fin whales reported in the last 24 years around the Welsh coast, with the last one being in 2020, which turned up in the river Dee.
The whale, which was over 21m (68.8in) in length, was believed to be a female but due to the state of decomposition Marine Environment Monitoring could not confirm this.
Fin whales are the second largest whale after the blue whale.