NARRAGANSETT — A whale carcass washed ashore near Roger W. Wheeler Memorial Beach and the Point Judith Breachway, the U.S. Coast Guard said yesterday.

The 14-foot-long whale had been sighted in the Harbor of Refuge off Point Judith, and the Coast Guard was notified Friday afternoon, according to the Coast Guard and Michael Flynn, a middle school teacher in Bellingham, Mass., and a resident of the adjacent Sand Hill Cove neighborhood.

The matter was referred to the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, where a spokesman said the animal probably was a minke whale.

DEM police Sgt. Frances Ethier responded to the scene of the beaching, which is on private property, and removed a sample of tissue from the mammal for examination by the staff at Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut, according to the spokesman. She also took photos of it.

The whale was wrapped with some kind of line, perhaps fishing line, and that was cut off and sent for examination to the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies.

Removal of the whale is the responsibility of the property owner, the spokesman said.

Although the whale was beyond saving, Ethier recently fared better with a leatherback sea turtle in Narragansett Bay. The turtle had become fouled in lobster gear, and Ethier and another DEM officer were able to free it.