A badly decomposed whale washed up in Fremont at the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge, the latest in a recent string of dead whales to turn up on Bay Area beaches, officials said Thursday.

The carcass was found in Coyote Hills Regional Park just north of the Dumbarton Bridge.

It is an area inaccessible to the public and the current plan is to leave it where it is and let it decompose, said Jones.

As of Thursday morning, the whale remains offshore, said Marine Mammal Center spokeswoman Laura Sherr.

In August, a large whale carcass found lodged under an Alameda pier in the Oakland Estuary was towed away by the Marine Mammal Center to be examined.

However, once biologists with the Marine Mammal Center and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service were able to access the whale, biologists determined they could perform the necropsy today, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Doug Cordell said.

Only one other whale has been found in the San Francisco Bay itself within the a year ago.

It’s not uncommon for dead whales to wash ashore on beaches in nearby Alameda, California.