SAN DIEGO -- The carcass of a roughly 20-foot-long whale that had washed up a Del Mar beach and then towed back to the ocean washed up again at a Torrey Pines beach Saturday.

The dead marine mammal was first spotted by a beachgoer at dawn, said San Diego lifeguard Lt. Ed Vodrazka.

"It's still in the same condition," he said. "It's still intact."

Officials confirmed that the carcass was the same one that washed up on the sand near 29th Street and Ocean Front in Del Mar Friday morning, Vodrazka said.

San Diego sheriff's deputies and Del Mar lifeguards decided to dispose of the carcass by towing it back out to the ocean.

This time, San Diego lifeguards want to try something different. Lifeguards called the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla to see if they wanted the carcass for research, Vodrazka said.

If Scripps researchers don't want the whale, lifeguards will dispose of the mammal at the Miramar Landfill, he said.

Susan Chivers of the National Marine Fisheries Service's stranding team told The San Diego Union-Tribune Friday that the whale most likely had been dead for several weeks.

Chivers also said that she does not believe the carcass is the wayward whale that had been swimming around San Diego Bay in recent weeks because of the decomposition of the carcass.

Del Mar lifeguard chief Patrick Vergne told the newspaper that the whale had a large gash at the midline and may have been hit by a ship's propeller.