December 24, 2015 -- Experts are looking for clues in the death of a newborn gray whale washed ashore on Santa Monica Beach Tuesday, calling it was a rare and baffling incident.

The neonate whale was discovered at 2:30 p.m. near Tower 12 north of the Santa Monica Pier, said Lidia Barillas, an ocean-life specialist and spokesperson for Los Angeles County lifeguards. The baby was about 10 feet long and 1,200 pounds.

Barillas said the whale was taken off the beach by Santa Monica City maintenance workers to a city-owned yard. Experts from the Natural History Museum were called in and performed tests, she said.

No results had been announced on Wednesday morning, she said. The Natural History Museum could not be reached for comment.

“It’s very rare to see this,” Barillas, a lifeguard with L.A. County for 15 years, said of the dead baby whale.

“We’re asking that if you see something like this, please don’t touch it,” she told the Lookout. “Call a lifeguard.”

“It is very, very uncommon,” agreed Jose Bacallao, operations manager for the Pier Aquarium.

Bacallao said gray whales are normally “adaptive” to conditions. But he said the stormy weather on Sunday and Monday created “pretty rough” waters off Santa Monica, and that it is possible the baby whale couldn’t survive.

In the typical migration, gray whales spend the summer in the Artic before traveling to Baja California, where they breed and give birth in coastal lagoons during the fall according to, experts.

Calves are weaned at about eight months, after migrating with their mothers and head back to northern feeding grounds, experts said.

Gray whales first pass through California coastal waters in December and January in the migration south, and then again as they head back norht in March, April and May.

Sarah Haramson Sikich, vice president of Santa Monica-based Heal the Bay, said the baby whale found Tuesday appeared to have been born during the migration through California instead of prior to it, as usual.

It was also smaller; newborn calves average 16 feet in length and weigh about 1,500 pounds, according to experts.

Still, those who watch and analyze Santa Monica’s ocean waters were mostly baffled by Tuesday’s finding, which comes at a time when the warmer waters of El Nino are causing many oddities.

Just last August, Heal the Bay and others were suprised when a local fisherman reeled in a young Hammerhead Shark off the Pier ("Rare Hammerhead Shark Caught off the Santa Monica Pier," August 11, 2015).

That too was a rare event for Santa Monica. The shark was a juvenile which was believed to have been lured by warm water and plentiful marine life to feed on at the Pier caused by El Nino.