juvenile gray whale spotted this week in the Willapa River<\/a> in Pacific County has died, according to the Cascadia Research Collective.<\/p>\nResearchers confirmed the whale\u2019s death after it was seen multiple times near Raymond over the past several days. The organization said it is working with local partners to determine whether it is safe to conduct an examination of the animal and is asking the public to stay away.<\/p>\n
The whale was first reported Wednesday and seen again Thursday in roughly the same area.<\/p>\n
Though the whale appeared thin, it was behaving normally and did not show visible signs of injury earlier in the week, said Jessie Huggins, a research biologist with the Cascadia Research Collective.<\/p>\n
While rare, whales entering rivers is not unheard of, Huggins said.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed the sightings, and the agency had been monitoring the situation along with Cascadia Research Collective and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.<\/p>\n
As of Wednesday, the whale was \u201cactively feeding and swimming,\u201d according to Fish and Wildlife.<\/p>\n
Crews had been attempting to relocate the whale after it was not immediately found Thursday, but it was later seen again near Raymond.<\/p>\n
Researchers had planned to continue monitoring the whale and give it time to return to open water, with a larger response under consideration if it remained in the river.<\/p>\n
RELATED: 2 dead whales wash ashore on Copalis Beach<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Researchers confirmed the whale\u2019s death after it was seen multiple times near Raymond over the past several days.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[85,46,141,386],"class_list":["post-375932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}