Hopes fade for saving whale stranded in France's river Seine

Time is running out to find a way to save the beluga, caught between two locks in the Seine

Watch: 'Lost' Beluga whale in France's Seine river

Watch: 'Lost' Beluga whale in France's Seine river
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Rescuers on Sunday said they were in a race against time to find a way to save a malnourished beluga whale that has swum up the river Seine.

The stranded animal was first seen on Tuesday in the river that runs through Paris to the English Channel.

It has since Friday been caught between two locks about 70 kilometres north of the French capital.

Experts now say leaving the whale in the warm, stagnant water between the lock gates is no longer an option.

"He has to be moved in the coming 24 to 48 hours. These conditions are not good for him," Sea Shepherd France chief Lamya Essemlali told AFP.

Specialists held out "little hope" for the visibly underweight whale as they were "in a race against the clock" to save it, Ms Essemlali said.

"We are all doubtful about its own ability to return to the sea," she said. "Even if we 'drove' it with a boat, that would be extremely dangerous, if not impossible."

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Before swimming between the two locks, "he had the tendency to be heading toward Paris. It would be catastrophic if he reached there", Ms Essemlali said.

"The euthanasia option has been ruled out for the moment because at this stage it would be premature".

The whale still has "energy ... turns its head, reacts to stimuli", she said after a meeting of experts and French officials.

Although rescuers have tried feeding it frozen herring and then live trout, the animal was refusing the food.

"His lack of appetite is surely a symptom of something else ... an illness," Ms Essemlali said.

"He is malnourished and this dates back weeks, if not months. He was no longer eating at sea."

On Saturday veterinarians administered "vitamins and products to stimulate its appetite," police in Normandy's Eure department, which is overseeing the rescue effort, said on Sunday.

The small spots that were reported on its pale skin on Saturday were caused by the fresh water, it said.

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Another option would be to take it out of the water, give it vitamins, check the cause of the illness and eventually ship it out to sea when it regains its strength.

Yet another is "to let it end its life peacefully, like someone who is very ill and who does not have much chance to live", said Isabelle Dorliat-Pouzet, a senior police official in Evreux.

Belugas are normally found only in cold Arctic waters and while they migrate south in the autumn to feed as ice forms, they rarely venture so far.

An adult can reach up to four metres.

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France's Pelagis Observatory, which specialises in sea mammals, the nearest beluga population is off the Svalbard archipelago, north of Norway, 3,000 kilometres from the Seine.

It is only the second recorded sighting of a beluga in a French river since 1948, when a fisherman in the estuary of the Loire river found one in his nets.

The sighting comes a few months after a killer whale — also known as an orca but technically part of the dolphin family — became stranded in the Seine and was later found dead between Le Havre and Rouen in late May.

A postmortem examination found the animal, more than four metres long, had probably suffered exhaustion after being unable to feed.

Officials said they had also discovered a bullet lodged in the base of its skull, although it was far from clear whether the wound played a role in its death.

Updated: August 08, 2022, 12:49 AM