The carcass of a stillborn gray whale calf was found yesterday at Huntington State Beach yesterday. Usually an annual occurrence for the area, officials say this particular whale is smaller than usual and marine biologists said it appears it died from natural causes. Although it's 15-foot size in length is small compared to adult whales, estimates are that the whale weighed about 3,000 pounds. "Full-grown gray whales can reach up to 50 feet in length, weigh 80,000 pounds and are about the size of a school bus," reports the LA Times.

To see how big these whales can get, check out the photo below of people standing on a beached whale in the 1960s (note: photo above is of a whale beached in Hunting Beach in 2001, not yesterday).

A beached whale in the 1960s at an unknown location | Photo by superbomba via Flickr

Related: Recently, the news of the SoCal seas has been about the Navy, the state and environmentalists have been fighting over the use of sonar and how it affects the livelihood of dolphins.