Decaying carcass of Wally the whale may have returned to California beach

Officials say a dead whale that keeps floating to the southern California coast after being towed out to sea may have returned to the shoreline again.

Encinitas lifeguards say a whale body that came ashore Saturday at Grandview beach had been decaying in the water for about two weeks, KABC-TV reports.

Officials have not yet conclusively determined if the body is that of a female whale named Wally, but they believe it is the female whale, according to the TV station. The animal was between 10 and 20 years old when it died, and had appeared in popular videos online.

Wally was first towed out into the ocean after washing up on Dockweiler state beach in Los Angeles County before the Fourth of July weekend. The decaying carcass was towed again by lifeguards a week later when it drifted toward San Pedro. The whale was spotted near Newport Beach on 10 July and was towed out a third time but drifted back on 11 July and had to be removed a fourth time.

Encinitas lifeguard Larry Giles told a San Diego Fox affiliate that officials hoped to remove the body over the next few days, and that it will take heavy equipment to move the carcass, which weighs several tons. The odor of decay can be smelled for hundreds of yards, he added.

Depending on where a whale carcass washes ashore, wildlife officials may either leave it as food for natural scavengers, as in remote areas of Alaska, or tow it out to sea, often at great cost, to decompose naturally. Sometimes they will also bury it under the beach, or cut the body into pieces and dispose of them in landfills. Officials do not attempt to explode whales, although in 1970 an engineer from Oregon attempted to remove a carcass with dynamite, sending flesh flying hundreds of yards, and in 2013 a sperm whale carcass exploded with decay on the Faroe Islands.