France will give vitamin boost to stuck beluga whale in River Seine

• A beluga whale is trapped in the Seine River Seine north of Paris.
• The whale has been given frozen herring and live fish to eat, but appears to be starving.
• Experts are baffled as to how the animal got so far from its natural habitat.

French authorities attempting to save a beluga whale stuck in the Seine River have devised a new strategy: a vitamin cocktail.

Rescuers believe it will help the missing whale recover its appetite and the energy it needs to return to sea, according to AFP.

The clearly starved creature was discovered in the river on Tuesday, some 70 kilometers (44 miles) north of Paris.

Scientists are concerned about the animal’s health after unsuccessful efforts to get it to swim away.

Rescuers have so far given the four-meter whale frozen herring and live fish to eat, but a local official in Eure, Isabelle Dorliat-Pouzet, claimed the animal did not seem to take either.

“It’s quite emaciated and seems to be having trouble eating,” she said on Saturday, according to AFP.

Authorities hope that feeding vitamins into the trapped animal would increase its hunger and enable it make the lengthy 160km (100 mile) voyage back up the river and out to the English Channel, where it may swim back to its Arctic home.

Another possibility being examined is to remove the whale totally from the river, but this would need the creature having enough strength to endure an even more perilous voyage.

Small blotches emerged on the whale’s skin on Saturday, although it was unclear if this was a response to the pure water of the River Seine – as opposed to its typical salt water home – or a symptom of the animal’s failing health.

Scientific observers reported that the whale was acting nervously, only briefly coming to the surface, and generating less of the songs typical of a whale, prompting more worries about its health.

Experts are baffled as to how the whale got so far away from its normal environment, the chilly seas of the Arctic and sub-Arctic.

Belugas may sometimes move south in the fall to eat when ice builds, but they seldom travel that far from their natural environment. Similar tales, however, are not uncommon.

A killer whale was discovered dead after travelling up the Seine River in Normandy in May. A strategy to use acoustic stimuli to coax the four-meter male orca back to the water failed, and specialists subsequently judged it was very sick.

A dead whale was discovered in the River Thames near Gravesend in 2019, according to UK authorities.

This occurred mere weeks after the death of a humpback whale sighted swimming in the same area of ocean. It was supposed to have entered the Thames due to a nautical mistake, maybe at high tides.

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