A dead humpback whale washed ashore on Rockaway Beach sometime this morning.

Whale beached on Beach 118th St in Rockaway Park (video: Robert Maggio) pic.twitter.com/X9WFWtNlvL — Frank H Jump (@FadingAd) April 4, 2017

DNAInfo reports the whale was found near Beach 117th Street in Rockaway Park around 7 a.m. this morning. Witness Silver Serin, who took the photos above and is the owner of the nearby Zingara Vintage, wrote in a Facebook post about coming upon the whale:

What a sad day on the beach. What a magnificent beast. She is enormous and washed up in the storm last night. When you look at a whale, it's hard to think of it as a mammal. I was looking for hair on her huge rubbery body. I found some whiskers on her snout. From the very front, she looks like a sea lion, or a manatee. Her tail spanned about 8 feet and she is about 20 feet long. She is soft. Very soft. I can imagine her gliding through the ocean. Her eyes are enormous, about the size of baseballs. And her ridges are deep and flexible. What a sight to behold. I wonder just what killed her. How old she was. Will her family miss her. Poor creature.

The Atlantic Marine Conservation Society said it is currently in communication with New York Sanitation and the Office of Emergency Management to determine a plan to assess the dead whale.

Whales can be frequently spotted swimming near Rockaway Beach and other parts of the city, and they unfortunately wash ashore fairly commonly as well; the last one happened in January near LaGuardia Airport.