The beluga specimen caught in the Seine was taken from the river. AFP reports that it took about 6 hours to lift the 800-kilogram animal using a net attached to a crane. The whale was placed on a barge for a team of a dozen veterinarians to administer first aid.
The beluga, a protected species normally found in cold arctic waters, is now loaded onto a refrigerated truck and transported to shore. The four-metre whale was spotted heading towards Paris over a week ago and ran aground about 130 kilometers inland of the English Channel at Saint-Pierre-La-Garenne in Normandy. Since Friday, the animal’s inland movement has been blocked by a lock at Saint-Pierre-La-Garenne, 70 kilometers north-west of Paris, and its health has deteriorated after the whale refused to eat. However, his condition was judged “fair” by the veterinary team who assisted him. In a lock at the port of Ouistreham in the English Channel, a pool of seawater has been prepared for the animal, which will be kept under surveillance for three days in preparation for its release.
However, the “extraordinary” operation to return to the sea is not without risk for the weakened and stressed whale, said Isabelle Brasseur, who is part of a Marineland team dispatched alongside the NGO Sea Shepherd to assist in the rescue. “He could die now, in handling, in transit or at point B,” he added in Ouistreham.
The 24 divers involved in the operation and the rescuers who tended the ropes had to try several times between 10:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. to lure the animal into the nets in order to lift it out of the water. A group of onlookers stayed on the shore all night to watch the operation.
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