One bright-blue afternoon earlier this month at R.C.A. Beach in Bolinas, a team of researchers in waders and elbow-length rubber gloves toiled about a colossal creature from the sea. They cut, pulled and prodded it, deciphering how it died.
The 40-foot male gray whale had washed ashore the night before, on April 1, and it lay splayed across the sand, giving off the foul stench of a refrigerator left for weeks without power.