Status: 08/10/2022 07:49 a.m
Spectacular rescue in France: The beluga whale, which got lost in the Seine, has been lifted out of the water and is now to be prepared for its return to the sea. But it is unclear whether the action will succeed.
The rescue operation lasted six hours, then French forces pulled the beluga whale that had gotten lost in the Seine out of the water. The marine mammal, four meters long and weighing around 800 kilograms, was lifted in a net with a crane from the lock in the northern French municipality of Saint-Pierre-la-Garenne. The whale was then placed on a barge, where numerous veterinarians immediately attended to it.
The Beluga is now to be brought to the city of Ouistreham on the English Channel in a refrigerated truck. A seawater basin was prepared for him in the port there. The whale is to be examined and cared for for three days and then taken to the open sea – “quite far from the coast,” said the secretary-general of the prefecture of the Eure department, Isabelle Dorliat-Pouzet. However, she warned that the rescue operation was not a “self-successful operation”: It could cause stress in the whale, which could lead to death.
Whale could be sick
The beluga was first sighted in the Seine on Tuesday last week and has been stuck in a lock in Saint-Pierre-La-Garenne since Friday, around 70 kilometers from Paris – 130 kilometers from the Seine estuary on the English Channel. According to experts, the animal cannot survive long in the warm fresh water. Beluga whales typically live in arctic waters off the coasts of Russia, Alaska, and Canada.
Several attempts to feed the emaciated and weakened animal had been unsuccessful. According to experts, his lack of appetite could be a sign of illness. It is therefore only the second time that a beluga whale has lost its way to France. A fisherman first spotted such an animal in his nets in 1948 in the Loire estuary.