A gray whale with no tail was spotted off Newport Beach on Wednesday, Feb. 21, a rare sight that an expert believes happened due to an entanglement.

Photographer Brooke Palmer captured images while aboard a boat operated by East Meets West Excursions, and at first couldn’t help but feel sad for the marine mammal, she said.

The whale was making its way northbound, slowly, seeming to favor its right side after each breath, she observed.

“However, despite the impairment, this whale did seemingly well as it adapted to the loss of an integral limb,” she wrote in an e-mail. “After viewing the whale for a few sequences I realized how resilient and adaptive they can be under unusual circumstances.”

Expert Alisa Schulman-Janiger, who runs the Gray Whale Census project on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, said the whale’s injury was likely from an entanglement that left the whale with no fluke.

She noted that several flukeless gray whales have been reported over the years.

One female was encountered with calves in multiple years, and another gray whale was seen last year by the Gray Whale Census from the Point Vicente Interpretive Center. Another was documented in March 2015.

Schulman-Janiger noted the injury to this week’s flukeless whale looked recent, with the stump edge covered in whale lice and no healed skin visible.

The sighting happened the same day a gray whale was photographed off Dana Point, about 1.5 miles off the Dana Point Harbor. The photographer, aboard Dana Pride, didn’t notice the whale was entangled until she got home to examine her images, according to a social media post by Schulman-Janiger.

The line was green and yellow, wrapped around the base of the peduncle tail and over its left fluke.

Schulman-Janiger said if the whale is spotted by a boater, do not approach or try to disentangle it. Rather, attempt to stay with it and take photos to document it, and call the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Entangled Whale Hotline at 877-767-9425, or hail the U.S. Coast Guard on CH 16.

On Friday, it was announced that the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach had received $1,078 from the American Cetacean Society Orange County, in support of its role in the Large Whale Entanglement Response Team.

The funds will be allocated to PMMC’s Whale Entanglement Team.