Humpback whale rescued in shallow Baltic Sea last week? it’s stuck again
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a young hunchback whale The man, named Timmy, was stranded again in shallow bays off Germany’s Baltic coast on Sunday morning after a week-long ordeal, raising doubts over his survival.
The plight of Timmy, thought to be 12 to 15 meters long, reflects the difficulty of freeing such creatures given their size, with rescue teams using dredging equipment and boats to guide the whale on the long route back to the Atlantic.
After days of efforts to free the animal, rescue workers are now hopeful that the whale will manage to free itself.
“The whale is very vulnerable. We are still hopeful that it will escape,” Daniela von Scheper, a Greenpeace marine expert, told Reuters.
The whale, whose gender has not been established, was named after Timmendorfer Strand, a white sandy beach on Germany’s resort-filled Baltic Sea coast, where it was first spotted on a nearby sandy shore last Monday.
Repeated rescue attempts have since failed, with Greenpeace and its partners documenting an animal in severe stress, with burns to its skin and fishing gear stuck in its mouth.
There were some glimpses of hope over the weekend, when the whale managed to free itself twice before getting into trouble again.
Humpback whales are not native to the Baltic Sea. According to von Schepper, while uncommon, large whales are spotted in the area every couple of years.
Conservationists say disrupted migration routes and human impacts play a role in whale strandings around the world, although the animals can also lose their way in search of food.
“Some of them find a way out again, unfortunately others don’t,” von Scheper said.
Warming waters off the US west coast could lead to more humpback whales becoming entangled in fishing gear, scientists say. He says the areas of cold water in which the animals normally thrive are shrinking, forcing them closer to shore.
