After almost six hours of labor by dozens of divers and rescuers, the 800-kilogram (1,800-pound) cetacean was lifted from the river by a web and crane at round 4:00 am (0200 GMT) and positioned on a barge underneath the rapid care of a dozen veterinarians.

The beluga, a protected species often present in chilly Arctic waters, was then given a well being examine and pushed in a refrigerated truck towards the coastal city of Ouistreham.

Upon arrival, the beluga might be put in in a seawater lock the place it will likely be held for commentary for a number of days earlier than being launched into the open sea.

However officers in Eure, the place the beluga was stranded, mentioned the whale was worryingly skinny.

“It bodes, in response to veterinarians, for a poor very important prognosis,” the Eure prefecture mentioned in an announcement after the rescue operation, which it mentioned was “notably complicated”.

The four-metre (13-foot) whale was noticed greater than per week in the past heading in direction of Paris and was stranded about 130 kilometres (81 miles) inland from the Channel at Saint-Pierre-la-Garenne in Normandy.

Since Friday, the animal’s motion inland had been blocked by a lock at Saint-Pierre-la-Garenne, 70 kilometres (44 miles) northwest of Paris, and its well being deteriorated after it refused to eat.

Isabelle Dorliat-Pouzet, secretary basic of the Eure prefecture, mentioned earlier that medical exams can be carried out earlier than transporting the whale.

“He’s a male, that he’s very underweight and that he has just a few sores,” she mentioned.

– ‘An amazing day’ –

The animal’s rescue was hailed on-line after a nail-biting few days.

“In the present day is a superb day for this beluga whale and for everybody concerned in its rescue,” conservation group Sea Shepherd mentioned on its web site.

However the operation to return it to the ocean shouldn’t be with out danger, mentioned Isabelle Brasseur of the Marineland sea animal park in southern France, a part of a Marineland workforce despatched to help with the rescue.

“It might be that he dies now, through the dealing with, through the journey or at level B,” in Ouistreham, she advised AFP Tuesday.

The 24 divers concerned within the operation and the rescuers dealing with the ropes needed to attempt a number of instances between 10:00 pm and 4:00 am to lure the animal into the nets to be lifted out of the water.

As preparations for the operation acquired underneath method, folks gathered alongside the banks of the river to look at.

“I’m hopeful that he’ll attain the ocean and that he won’t find yourself just like the orca,” mentioned Isabelle Rainsart, referring to a killer whale that was noticed within the Seine in Might however later died.

“We’ll wait to see how the transport goes, however we might have already succeeded within the exhausting half,” added Rainsart, who first filmed the beluga on August 2 from her backyard overlooking the river.

Curiosity within the beluga’s destiny has unfold far past France, producing a big inflow of economic donations and different support from conservation teams in addition to people, officers mentioned.

Whereas belugas migrate south within the autumn to feed as ice varieties of their native Arctic waters, they not often enterprise up to now.

In keeping with France’s Pelagis Observatory, which specialises in sea mammals, the closest beluga inhabitants is off the Svalbard archipelago, north of Norway, 3,000 kilometres from the Seine.

The trapped whale is just the second beluga ever sighted in France. The primary was pulled out of the Loire estuary in a fisherman’s web in 1948.