A whale has been washed up at Shoreham Beach for the first time in living memory.

The 20-tonne, 15ft minke whale was found lying dead on the shingle near the coastguard look-out off Old Fort Road yesterday.

The whale was washed up overnight and swept back into the sea at 10.20am.

Elaine Norman-Davis, 38, who lives in Old Fort Road, discovered the whale.

She said: "It was white with dark grey bits and decomposing. It just looked like a great big blob of something, rolling to and fro in the waves."

Paul Smith of the Environment Agency said it was most likely to be a minke whale.

He said: "What we will try to do if we find it is to look at its liver and do toxicology tests to see what it has accumulated from the environment. We can find out its age and sex by doing DNA tests on its teeth.

"It could have been caught in fishing nets, or died of natural causes, or been run over by a boat. It's the storminess of the seas which will have washed it further inland than normal."

Adur District Council will be responsible for the disposal of the whale's body if it is found again.

Council safety adviser John Rodway said: "If it had been here, we would have assessed the situation to devise a plan for removing the carcass from the beach to reduce any health hazard that may have been caused by it."

He was still hopeful the whale would be washed up further east along the coast.

Mr Rodway said: "As part of our responsibility to the public, we will be checking the beaches after high tide and before dark."