A minke whale became stranded along the Bavon shoreline on Saturday and was in such bad shape it had to be euthanized by the marine mammal stranding team out of Virginia Beach.

Steve Versen of Richmond, who has a summer home in Bavon, said he was running along Bavon Beach Saturday morning when he saw the big, shiny black creature in the water alongside marsh grasses. He thought the whale was dead, but when he touched it, its tail moved.

The whale, about 15 feet long, looked like it could have been injured by a propeller, said Versen. He called the marine mammal stranding team at the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center in Virginia Beach, and he and his family used beach buckets to pour water over it and try to keep it alive as they waited for the team to arrive. It was breathing and looking at bystanders the entire time, said Versen.

“It was sad,” he said.

When the stranding team arrived and examined the whale, one of the team members explained that the whale was...