For the second time this week, Southern California has seen a rare sea beast washed ashore, far from home waters.
This time, it's a saber-toothed whale, better known to live in deep Alaskan waters than in the warm surf of tourist-choked Venice Beach in Los Angeles where it stranded Wednesday.
In an extraordinary way even for scientists, the carcass of the nearly 15-foot and 2,000-pound whale was intact -- except for a couple of fresh bite marks from sharks. The whale, a female, apparently was barely alive when it came ashore -- a highly unusual sight because beached whales are often badly decomposed or badly eaten by marine life, a local biologist said.
"It was really humbling and sad to see such a majestic creature stranded this way," said Heather Doyle, director of the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium. She rushed down the beach on her bicycle to witness the rarely-seen animal after staff naturalist Brittany Corona happened upon a crowd surrounding the whale on the sand.
Such a sighting of the whale up close in California "is a once in a lifetime opportunity," she added.
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