Since Friday, the animal’s inland movement has been blocked by a lock at Saint-Pierre-la-Garren, 70 kilometers (44 miles) northwest of Paris, and its health has deteriorated after it refused to eat.
Rescuers pull in a net to save a beluga whale stranded on the Seine River in Notre-Dame-de-la-Garène, northern France, August 9, 2022. Photo: JEAN-FRANCOIS MONIER/AFP
SAINT-PIERRE LA GAREIN – A white whale that had been stuck in the Seine River in northern France for more than a week was pulled from the water early Wednesday in a risky rescue operation, but officials warned that it was in poor health.
After nearly six hours of work by dozens of divers and rescuers, the 800-kilogram (1,800-pound) cetacean was lifted from the river by net and crane around 4:00 a.m. (02:00 GMT) and placed on a barge under the emergency care of a dozen veterinarians.
The beluga whales, a protected species normally found in cold arctic waters, were then given a medical check-up and taken in a cooler to the coastal town of Wistream.
Upon arrival, the beluga will be placed in a seawater lock where it will be monitored for several days before being released into the open sea.
But officials in Ayr, where the beluga was stranded, said the whale was very thin.
“According to veterinarians, this indicates a poor life prognosis,” Ayr Prefecture said in a statement after the rescue operation, which it said was “particularly difficult.”
The four-metre (13-foot) whale was spotted more than a week ago en route to Paris and stranded about 130 kilometers (81 miles) inland from the channel at Saint-Pierre-la-Gaurenne in Normandy.
Since Friday, the animal’s inland movement has been blocked by a lock at Saint-Pierre-la-Garren, 70 kilometers (44 miles) northwest of Paris, and its health has deteriorated after it refused to eat.
Isabelle Dorliot-Puzet, secretary general of Ayr prefecture, previously said medical tests would be carried out before the whale was transported.
“He’s a man, he’s very underweight and he has several wounds,” she said.
“BIG DAY”
The animal’s rescue was posted online after it had been biting its nails for days.
“Today is a great day for this beluga whale and for everyone involved in its rescue,” conservation group Sea Shepherd said on its website.
But the operation to return him to the sea is not without risk, said Isabel Brasseur of Marineland in southern France, who is part of the Marineland team sent to help with the rescue.
“Maybe he will die now, during loading, during the journey or at point B,” she told AFP on Tuesday.
The 24 divers involved in the operation and rescuers manning the ropes had to try several times between 10pm and 4am to lure the animal into the nets to lift it out of the water.
As preparations were made for the operation, people gathered on the banks of the river to watch.
“I hope it makes it to the sea and doesn’t end up like the killer whale,” said Isabelle Reinsart, referring to the killer whale that was spotted in the Seine in May but later died.
“We’ll wait to see how the transport goes, but we may have already succeeded in the hard part,” added Reinsart, who photographed the beluga for the first time on August 2 from her garden overlooking the river.
Interest in the beluga’s fate has spread far beyond France, prompting an outpouring of financial donations and other help from both conservation groups and individuals, officials said.
While beluga whales migrate south in the fall to feed when ice forms in their native Arctic waters, they rarely venture that far.
According to the French observatory Pelagis, which specializes in marine mammals, the nearest population of belugas is off the Svalbard archipelago, north of Norway, 3,000 kilometers from the Seine.
The whale captured is only the second beluga whale ever spotted in France. The first one was pulled by a fishing net from the mouth of the Loire in 1948.
