A humpback whale that had been stuck for more than a week in two different spots in the Baltic Sea began to swim again on Monday evening, despite showing signs of deteriorating health throughout the day.
Water levels in Wismar Bay rose by about 30 centimeters on Monday evening, offering a chance for the whale to free itself. Rescuers had been preparing to try and coax it into moving off. “It could now get on its way if it wanted to,” Till Backhaus, the regional environment minister for Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, said. A ministry spokesman said it was unclear which direction the whale was swimming; environmental organization Greenpeace reported it was heading toward Wismar harbor.
Professor Burkhard Baschek of the German Oceanographic Museum said Monday could prove a “decisive day.” He warned that freeing the animal from the shallows was almost entirely up to the whale and that there was limited scope for external assistance. Baschek said the mammal had moved only about 1 to 1.5 meters (3 to 5 feet) in the previous 24 hours, despite an earlier period of higher water levels that presented an opportunity to move.
Greenpeace’s Franziska Saalmann said the whale was less responsive than on previous days when rescuers tried to gauge its reactions to stimuli. “When we gently tried to reanimate it, by striking the water loudly with our paddle, it barely reacted,” Saalmann told reporters. “It’s not making any more noises. This lack of movement and reaction to our presence shows that it’s simply very weak and getting weaker.”
Baschek said the whale was now breathing only roughly once every four minutes, a “massive reduction,” and that its skin showed signs of secondary infections. He added that if a clear, simple chance to escape arose and the whale could not take it, euthanization to end its suffering might eventually need to be considered — though “we have not reached that point yet.”
The whale was initially stranded on a sandbank off a beach in Timmendorf early last week. After several days and dredging efforts to clear a path, it freed itself and began moving north. While attempting to navigate shallows and natural bottlenecks of the Baltic Sea toward the North Sea and the Atlantic, it stranded again off Wismar Bay after swimming east rather than north.
Marine biologist Robert Marc Lehmann, who had been on site in Timmendorf, criticized the continuing rescue operations over the weekend, saying he had been frozen out of later efforts and urging rescuers at Wismar to don wetsuits and wade out to the whale as he had. State Environment Minister Backhaus said he had been “in contact” with Lehmann and preferred to resolve issues through cooperation, urging the public to show “respect” for experts working on the rescue. Backhaus said he did not recognize “any deficits” in the work of the German Oceanographic Museum, Greenpeace, and others on site.
It is considered likely that the whale first lost its way and entered the Baltic Sea in early March.
Edited by: Rana Taha