The 13-foot whale was spotted heading towards Paris, stranded some 130 kilometres inland from the Channel at Saint-Pierre-la-Garenne in Normandy. The male weighed just 800 kilograms, well below an adult beluga’s typical weight of 1,200kg, and had not eaten since first spotted in the Seine.
24 divers worked through the night, trying several times between 10pm and 4am to lure the animal into nets. After nearly six hours of work, the 1,800-pound whale was lifted from the river by a net and crane at around 4:00am and placed on a barge under the immediate care of a dozen veterinarians.
It was then checked over by vets before being placed in a refrigerated truck for a road journey of more than 160km to the Channel port of Ouistreham. The plan had been to move the malnourished whale to a saltwater basin in the hope it might recover some strength before being transferred to the sea.
During the journey by road, the already-weak beluga suffered respiratory failure and was euthanised by vets shortly after arriving in Ouistreham to prevent further suffering.
According to France’s Pelagis Observatory, the nearest beluga population is off the Svalbard archipelago, north of Norway, some 1,800 miles from the Seine. It is not clear how this beluga ended up in the Seine. “It’s a total mystery how it got there,” said Liz Sandeman of Marine Connection.
