The whale was estimated to be 75 feet long and weighed more than 100 tons when it died sometime in the middle of last month, but the carcass had been floating for so long that it was hard to determine exactly what killed it.

A crew from SeaWorld San Diego examined the whale's body on Nov. 22 at the harbor, where it had washed up on shore, said Alisa Schulman-Janiger, a research associate with the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Cetacean Society. After taking samples of skin, blubber and organs for study, researchers towed the whale out to sea to decompose naturally.

The whale did not suffer any major blunt force trauma that could have contributed to its death, said NOAA researcher Michael Milstein. The finding was consistent with observations from SeaWorld staff that there were no gashes or puncture wounds on the whale's body.

When a blue whale washed up on the shore of Punta Arenas, Chile, in July 2016, it was missing half its body. The skeleton was discovered somewhat intact on the beach, but many questions remained about how such a large animal could have died.

While it's not uncommon for whales to fall victim to orca attacks — with some killer whales even specializing in hunting whales — this whale's wounds didn't match up with those normally associated with orca attacks.

In the case of this particular blue whale (blue whale bitten in half feb 2022), the cut is straight and there are no tooth rakes," as would be seen in an orca attack, Bruce Mate, director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University, told Live Science. "So, that's not what caused it.

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