An ‘out of the ordinary’ operation will be attempted on Tuesday evening to extract the beluga. The cetacean, four meters long and around 800 kilos, has been lost for a week in a lock on the Seine.
The animal should be deposited for a few days in a seawater lock, the time to receive care, before being taken offshore to be released.
The exceptional presence of this marine mammal in the Seine, about 130 kilometers from the mouth of the river in the Channel Sea, arouses great interest, beyond the French borders, with an influx of donations from foundations, associations and individuals to try to save it.
Spotted on August 2, the cetacean usually living in cold waters was still on Tuesday in the warm and stagnant water of a lock where he entered by himself, 70 kilometers northwest of Paris, which risks jeopardize its survival.
‘Obstacle course’
The operation led by the local authorities should begin at 8:00 p.m. and the transport of the cetacean must be carried out by truck to an unspecified destination.
‘He will be taken out of the water and taken to a pool of salt water where he will be kept under surveillance and given treatment, hoping that his illness will be curable. He will then be released at sea, with, it is hoped, the best chance of survival,” explained the NGO for the defense of the oceans Sea Shepherd on its website. The NGO spoke of “an obstacle course” to manage a situation “still very unprecedented in France”.
A member of the Marineland marine zoo team in Antibes (south-east), who arrived on the scene Monday evening, said that the operation would be “out of the ordinary”, in particular because of the configuration of the land.
The banks of the Seine ‘are not accessible to vehicles’ at this location and ‘everything must be transported by hand’, explained Isabelle Brasseur. For the specialist, ‘the priority is to put it back in seawater’.
Indeed, the experts and the authorities agree that the presence of the beluga, visibly sick, since Friday evening in this basin of approximately 125 meters by 25 m, with stagnant and relatively warm river water, could only be provisional.
‘Extremely resistant’
‘You have to try to understand what he has,’ said Ms Brasseur. ‘There may be internal damage that cannot be seen’, although these are ‘extremely resistant’ cetaceans.
Asked about the feasibility of such an operation, considering the size and mass of the animal, Ms Brasseur argued that Marineland had in the past ensured the extraction and transport of larger animals, such as an orca. born in Antibes and transported to the United States.
In May, an orca found itself in difficulty in the Seine. The operations to try to save her had failed and the animal finally died of starvation.
According to the Pelagis observatory, which specializes in marine mammals, the beluga has an arctic and subarctic distribution. Although the best known population is in the St. Lawrence estuary (Quebec), the closest to our shores is in Svalbard’, an archipelago located in northern Norway, 3000 kilometers from the Seine.
According to Pelagis, this is the second beluga known in France after a fisherman from the Loire estuary brought one up in his nets in 1948.
/ATS