A Gray's beaked whale has been found dead in the same corner of beach where a man was attacked by a shark a week earlier.

National Parks and Wildlife Service spokesman Lawrence Orel said two animals were reportedly found beached in the area on Saturday, but were pushed back out to sea by members of the public.

The dead Gray's beaked whale was found, covered in what are believed to be cookie-cutter shark bites, at the northern end of Seven Mile Beach between Lennox head and Byron Bay on Sunday.

"That's pretty much the inevitable outcome if a whale or dolphin strands," Mr Orel said.

"There's some underlying reason why they would strand.

"Even though it's an automatic response from people wanting to feel as though they're helping them by pushing them out to sea, this animal had some condition that caused it to be found dead on Sunday morning."

Mr Orel said he believed it was simply a coincidence that the carcass was discovered in the same area where a man survived a shark attack one week earlier.

"Whales die and wash up on our shores from time to time, that's natural," he said.

"It's also natural for sharks to consume those dead organisms - that's a function sharks perform in our ecosystem, they help keep it clean and healthy."

Mr Orel said the bite marks on the carcass looked to be from a cookie-cutter shark, also known as a cigar shark.

"They're not life-threatening," he said.

"Cookie-cutter sharks really only take small bites maybe the size of a 50mm plug of blubber, they don't really bite into the flesh and you see whales with lots of cookie-cutter scars."

The whale has been buried with plans to unearth it for scientific research in the future.

"All whales or dolphins that come ashore are of some interest to science because we don't get an awful lot of a chance to study them and when we have very unusual ones or very rare ones, such as this Gray's beaked whale, there is a lot of interest from the scientific community," Mr Orel said.

"And so, what happens is typically the carcass will be buried and nature goes about its course.

"All of the organisms that live in the sand will proceed to do their thing and in about 18 months to two years time you end up with a nice, clean skeleton which becomes very interesting and valuable to science."

The Gray's beaked whale is not commonly seen close to shore and is usually observed at depths of 2000 metres.