A dead whale sighting has been reported in San Francisco Bay. The type of whale and even its size are still unknown.

At about 4:30 a.m, the U.S. Coast Guard had notified the fisheries service of the whale carcass, floating between Alameda and Oakland, eventually spotted in the waters off Alameda adjacent to Jack London Square.

A dead whale was discovered trapped in an Alameda dock Wednesday morning. The carcass was taken to a site where scientists will be able to perform a necropsy to attempt to determine cause of death. With the increased numbers of whales in the area, it is normal to see an increase in strandings, center officials said. “The ship accepted tugs on the way in and they were told there was a whale on the bulbous bow”, said Lt. J.G. Aulner, from the U.S. Coast Guard. But as it decomposed, it resurfaced.

The measurements and the exact kind of whale specie found have not yet been confirmed either. A research biologist from the Marin Headlands-based Marine Mammal Center collected samples from the carcass, but because of the whale’s positioning, the researcher could not definitively determine its species, which appears to be a larger baleen whale such as a blue or fin whale, center officials said.

They are looking at options to pull the whale from the water for study, but such an operation would be expensive and hard.

In the last few months, dead whales have turned up on beaches along the Northern California coastline. It is required to remove the dead whale as it could interrupt Port of Oakland traffic.