ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. -- As the waves wash ashore in northeast Florida this October, so have two whales and one shark just this month.
George Biedenbach responds to scenes when large animals wash ashore.
He is with Georgia Aquarium's Conservation Field Station in the city of Marineland.
Wednesday morning, a dwarf sperm whale -- 7 feet 5 inches long, nearly 300 pounds -- washed up close near the Mary Street ramp near Crescent Beach in Southern St. Johns County.
"It showed no signs of trauma or injury, at least from an outward exam," Biedenbach said.
Just a couple weeks ago, on Oct. 3, a sperm whale calf washed ashore in Flagler Beach. It was just a baby.
"More than likely less than 3 days old," Biedenbach said.
He added that the animal was 10-and-a-half feet long and more than 700 pounds and in the same family of whales: Kogia.
"It was a sperm whale," Biedenbach said, "which a lot of people know as a Moby Dick whale. This one did have pigmentation."
But there were no signs of trauma.
And the third large animal to wash up this month in northeast Florida was a 6-foot long shark in Ponte Vedra last Friday. St. Johns County officials say it had the plastic brim of an old hat wrapped around its neck and gills. It's unclear if that plastic killed the shark until a necropsy is performed.
So what's going on here? Beyond the plastic, is there something besides Mother Nature at work here?
"It's hard to say exactly what's going on," Biedenbach noted. "It will take more than one or two individuals for us to really raise an eyebrow over these individual strandings, but again, only time will tell."
For now, Biedenbach and his colleagues will wait for tests results from the animals' bodies to see if the animals died of natural causes or from something humans caused.