• Beluga whale stranded in France’s Seine river for a week.
• Experts baffled as to how animal got so far south of its usual range.
• Stranded beluga whale in France’s Seine river has been removed from the water.

A stranded beluga whale in France’s Seine river has been removed from the water in the first step of an elaborate rescue mission.

The four-meter (13-foot) whale, a protected species found in far colder Arctic seas, had been stranded in the river north-west of Paris for a week.

A dozen veterinarians waited on a barge to treat the whale after it was hauled out of the sea in a hammock.

Divers and police are among the 80 persons working in the rescue.

It took the rescue crew about six hours overnight to hoist the 800kg whale out of the sea and onto a barge.

Rescuers are transferring it to a refrigerated vehicle, which will transport it back to the shore. They plan to cure the animal for a few days before releasing it back into the water.

“It’s a long rescue operation, very technical, which required many skills,”  said Isabelle Dorliat-Pouzet, secretary general of the Eure prefecture.

The beluga was stuck more than 100 kilometers (62 miles) inland, and its health worsened as a result of not eating.
During the relocation, animal professionals are on call at all times.

“There may be internal problems that we can’t see,”  said a Marineland marine animal park specialist in southern France, adding that belugas are “extremely hardy” as a species.

People gathered on the riverbanks of Normandy’s Saint-Pierre-La-Garenne to observe the rescue, as news of the whale’s survival went beyond France.

So far, rescuers have attempted to feed the whale frozen herring and live fish to stimulate its hunger and assist it in making the lengthy voyage back up the river to the English Channel – but the whale has not turned around.

Belugas may sometimes move south in the fall to eat when ice builds, but they seldom travel that far from their natural environment. The closest beluga population, according to France’s Pelagis Observatory, is off the Svalbard archipelago, north of Norway, 3,000km (1,870 miles) from the Seine.

Similar tales, however, are not uncommon. A killer whale was discovered dead after travelling up the Seine River in Normandy in May. In 2019, a dead whale was discovered in the River Thames near Gravesend, according to UK authorities.

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