Rescuers race to rescue a beluga whale trapped in the River Seine.
But French officials are still deciding whether or not to leave it there until it regains its appetite because it refused to eat the food it was offered.
They now hope to inject the animal with vitamins because it refused to eat frozen herring and live trout. France 24 quoted a senior police officer.
The whale, normally found in the cold waters of the Arctic, was first spotted swimming up the river from the english channel on Tuesday, August 2.
French officials are still deciding whether or not to leave it there until it regains its appetite because it refused to eat the food it was offered
It went upstream to Paris, through which the Seine flows, before reaching a lock 70 km from the French capital where it has remained ever since.
The appearance of the protected species has raised concerns among rescue services and biodiversity officials as they draw up plans to save the animal.
It’s unclear what led the whale to swim so far from its natural habitat, and there are concerns that if it doesn’t return, it could die in the ‘polluted’ river.
Earlier today, French divers have been pictured looking for the whale. The whale, normally found in the cold waters of the Arctic, was first seen swimming up the river from the Channel on Tuesday, Aug. 2.
The beluga whale was first spotted in the River Seine on Tuesday and has since been trapped between two locks 65 kilometers from Paris
Sightings of the whale, which drifted between two locks on the river and barely moved yesterday, have indicated that it appears to have ‘skin changes and underweight’.
Drone footage showed the whale swimming slowly, its white silhouette just below the waterline and rising to breathe.
The local prefecture said firefighters and biodiversity officials have assessed the animal’s “worrying” health and plans are in place to return it to where it belongs.
Gerard Mauger, deputy head of the French marine mammal research group GEEC, said the mammal spent “very little time on the surface” and appeared to have “good” lung capacity.
Firefighters and biodiversity officials used drones to monitor the beluga whale. Pictured: The whale’s white outline can be seen on a drone camera yesterday
Rescuers are monitoring the condition of the whale, which appears to be underweight. In the photo: rescue services on the river yesterday
But Mauger said rescuers struggled to guide the whale to the mouth of the Seine.
It is ‘currently between the Poses dam and that of Saint-Pierre-la-Garenne’, about 70 km. northwest of Paris, past the port of Rouen.
Officials have not specified the size of this individual, but an adult beluga can grow up to four meters (13 feet) in length.
Authorities in the Normandy department of Eure urged people to keep their distance so as not to disturb the animal.
Lamya Essemlali, head of the non-profit conservation organization Sea Shepherd, said some of her team would arrive in the evening with drones to more easily locate the whale.
“The environment is not very welcoming to the beluga, the Seine is very polluted and cetaceans are extremely sensitive to noise,” she said, adding that the Seine was “very noisy.”
There are health concerns for the protected species, with one expert saying it is very sensitive to noise and trapped in a ‘very noisy’ river. In the photo: River rescue services in speedboats yesterday
“The challenge now is to help feed him and guide him to the ocean.”
“The urgency is to feed the whale to prevent it from suffering the same fate as the killer whale that died after starving.”
She told Reuters: “The challenge now will be to help feed him and guide him to the ocean.”
The prefecture said it would assist and oversee Sea Shepherd’s efforts.
Eure authorities say solitary beluga whales sometimes swim further south than usual and can survive temporarily in fresh water.
As they move away from the Arctic in the fall to feed as ice forms, they rarely venture that far south.
The sighting follows the rare appearance of an orca in the Seine just over two months ago.
At the end of May, the mammal – also called orca, but technically part of the dolphin family – was found dead in the Seine between Le Havre and Rouen.
The animal was stranded in the river and was unable to return to the ocean despite officials’ attempts to escort it.
A month later, another whale was spotted in the Seine, believed to be a 10-meter-long (33-foot) minke whale.
In September 2018, a beluga whale was spotted for a few days in the River Thames near Gravesend, in what was then the southernmost sighting of a beluga whale on British shores.