- Yaroslav Lukov and Francesca Gillett
- BBC News
31 minutes
image source, Getty Images
The whale was transferred to a refrigerated truck in an attempt to help it reach the English Channel.
The beluga whale that was stranded in the Seine River in France had to be euthanized, ending a dramatic rescue mission that wowed the world public.
Officials say veterinarians made the decision as the four-meter mammal was being transported in a refrigerated truck.
During the night, rescuers spent nearly six hours pulling the 800kg whale out of the river using a crane and nets.
They had planned to release the animal into the sea but its health deteriorated following spending several days refusing food.
the cetaceanwho appeared to be malnourished, was first seen in the Seine River on Tuesday, some 70 kilometers north of Paris, the French capital.
image source, Getty Images
The beluga whale photographed on Saturday coming up for air between two locks on the Seine River.
After several unsuccessful attempts to encourage her to swim, rescuers they offered him frozen herring and live trout, but the mammal did not seem ready to eat.
“It is with great sadness that we announce that the beluga whale did not survivethe conservation group Sea Shepherd France wrote in a Twitter post on Wednesday.
“We are devastated by this tragic outcome, even though we knew it was very likely,” he added.
Meanwhile, Florence Ollivet-Courtois, a veterinarian with the local emergency services, was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying “the animal was not getting enough air and [estaba] visibly suffering“.
image source, Getty Images
“Therefore, we decided that there was no point in releasing him and we proceeded to euthanize,” added the veterinarian.
Experts are still puzzled as to why led the whale to stray so far southwhich had been trapped more than 100 km from its natural habitat.
On Wednesday a crowd of people gathered on the banks of the river in the northern city of Saint-Pierre-La-Garenne to witness the rescue.
But interest in the whale’s survival spread far beyond France, with conservation groups and individuals doing financial donations to help in the rescue operation.
image source, Getty Images
Authorities even considered injecting the stranded animal with vitamins to stimulate your appetite and help you make the long 100-mile journey back towards the English Channel.
From there it was to swim back to its natural habitat: the cold waters of the Arctic and the subarctic.
Beluga whales occasionally venture south in the fall to feed while the ice forms, but it is rare that they travel so far of his native home.
According to France’s Pelagis Observatory, which specializes in marine mammals, the closest beluga population is off the Svalbard archipelago in northern Norway. 3,000 km from the Seine.
image source, Getty Images
Normally, this animal swims in the waters of the northern Arctic.
But these kinds of stories are not unheard of.
In May, an orca was found dead following swimming upriver in the Seine in the Normandy region of France.
And in 2019, it was found a dead whale in the river thames near Gravesend, UK officials said.
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