Specialists are taking a look at a plan to move a malnourished beluga whale that has swum up France’s River Seine again to sea earlier than its well being deteriorates any additional, officers stated Monday.
Sub-prefect Isabelle Dorliat-Pouzet of France’s northern Eure division stated they had been significantly contemplating the choice.
“Within the pursuits of this beluga it may be tried,” she stated. “We’re working exhausting on it.” However she was unable to say after they would possibly make the try.
Officers within the prefecture of the Eure informed AFP that the whale might be transported on a barge, overland and even by helicopter.
However the challenges are appreciable, given they might be transporting a creature that weighs some 800 kilograms (practically 1,800 kilos) and is already sick and malnourished.
It will be a journey of 130 kilometres (80 miles) simply to get to the north coast of France.
Members of environmental group Sea Shepherd monitoring the whale stated Monday that it was not swimming up-river.
Nevertheless it was nonetheless not consuming, Sea Shepherd France president Lamya Essemlali informed AFP in a textual content message. There was, nevertheless, “no worsening of its situation”, she stated.
The whale was first noticed within the river that runs by Paris to the Channel final Tuesday.
Since Friday, it has been between two locks some 70 kilometres north of the French capital.
– Marineland specialists be a part of operation –
The last-ditch bid to avoid wasting the animal is partly due to fears that the river’s heat water is harming its well being.
One other different could be to open the locks within the hope that the beluga swims in the direction of the Channel, authorities stated.
However doing that runs the danger that it strikes additional upriver in the direction of Paris, which might be even worse for it.
A number of makes an attempt to feed the whale have failed prior to now days.
A 3-person crew from Marineland, Europe’s greatest sea animal theme park situated within the southern French resort of Antibes, was due on website later Monday.
“We’ve been following the operations at a distance from the beginning,” stated Isabelle Brasseur, answerable for schooling, analysis and conservation at Marineland.
“We’re slowly making progress,” she informed AFP. “There’s not a perfect resolution, we should weigh the professionals and the cons” of every choice to rescue the whale.
One of many specialists on the crew is a specialist for sea mammals, she stated, including they had been bringing a stretcher and different tools to attempt to transfer the animal.
On Saturday, veterinarians administered “nutritional vitamins and merchandise to stimulate its urge for food”, stated a press release Sunday by the police in Normandy’s Eure division, which is overseeing the rescue effort.
Belugas are usually discovered solely in chilly Arctic waters, and whereas they migrate south within the autumn to feed as ice types, they not often enterprise to date.
An grownup can attain as much as 4 metres (13 toes) in size.
In line with France’s Pelagis Observatory, specialised in sea mammals, the closest beluga inhabitants is off the Svalbard archipelago, north of Norway, 3,000 kilometres from the Seine.
