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A \u201cjuvenile\u201d gray whale that somehow found its way into the north fork of the Willapa River in Pacific County has been declared deceased.<\/p>\n
The whale was spotted on April 1. While it was thin, it was behaving normally and didn\u2019t appear to have any injuries, according to the Cascadia Research Collection (CRC).<\/p>\n
CRC went out on the river on April 2 and wasn\u2019t able to get the whale out.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are giving the whale time and space to leave the river on its own, but plans are being made with our partners at NOAA and WDFW if intervention is needed in the coming days,\u201d CRC wrote on Facebook on Thursday, April 2.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear how far inland the whale got.<\/p>\n
On Friday, CRC and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), with assistance from members of the Chinook and Shoalwater Bay Tribes, conducted an extensive on-water search for the young gray whale.<\/p>\n
The whale was not seen on the river on Friday, and CRC said it is hopeful that it made its way back to Willapa Bay and open water.<\/p>\n
However, on Saturday, CRC updated its Facebook post to indicate that the whale was indeed spotted on April 4.<\/p>\n
Later in the day on April 4, CRC said the whale has died.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are saddened to confirm that the whale seen in the Willapa River over the past few days is deceased. We are working with local partners to evaluate the safety of the location to conduct an examination,\u201d CRC wrote as a 5 p.m. update on April 4.<\/p>\n
The public is asked to stay away from the whale in the river.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A \u201cjuvenile\u201d gray whale that somehow found its way into the north fork of the Willapa River in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[179725,179723,90,56,54,55,4407,179724,179722],"class_list":{"0":"post-514238","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-cascadia-research-collection","9":"tag-gray-whale","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom","14":"tag-wildlife","15":"tag-willapa-bay","16":"tag-willapa-river"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}