- Beluga whale that wandered into France’s River Seine has been euthanized.
- Efforts to free the animal, which had been stuck since last Friday, started this morning.
- It was transported 99 miles (160 kilometers) in a refrigerated truck to Ouistreham, northeastern France.
A beluga whale that had wandered into France’s River Seine has been euthanized, according to French officials.
The effort to free the imprisoned animal, which had been stuck since last Friday, started early this morning.
A team of roughly 24 scientists and many more volunteers used a crane and nets to put the whale onto a refrigerated truck for the 99-mile (160-kilometer) journey to Ouistreham, a port town in northeastern France.
However, during its passage from the Paris canal to the seaside, it developed respiratory problems and had to be euthanized.
“Despite an exceptional rescue effort for the beluga, we are sorry to inform the cetacean’s death,” the Calvados department’s prefect stated on Twitter.
It had always been a dangerous undertaking, and there were fears that transferring the whale might injure it.
“he could die now, during the lifting”, conservation expert Isabelle Brasseur said, but it was more “important to try.”
After being relocated, veterinary investigations indicated that the dangerously emaciated beluga whale had no digestive function for unclear reasons.
Efforts to release the whale have been underway since it wandered into a saltwater basin in the Normandy area, amid concerns over its rapidly deteriorating condition.
It was discovered in a French river on Wednesday after wandering hundreds of kilometres from its Arctic habitat. The whale is said to have been bewildered by the underwater noise made by ships and boats.
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