The truck carrying the beluga which was extracted from a lock in the Eure on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, took the road around 7:30 a.m. in the direction of Ouistreham (Calvados), noted an AFP journalist on Wednesday. Upon arrival, the cetacean will be installed in a seawater lock where it will stay for several days before being released into the open sea. Tuesday evening, “more than 80 people were mobilized to extract the beluga from the lock in which he was stationed, in order to take him to a lock made available by Ports of Normandy and the Normandy Region in Ouistreham before releasing him into the open sea”, explained the Eure prefecture in a press release issued around 7:00 a.m.
To read : The operation to extract the beluga from the Seine “attempted in the evening”
The operation, “particularly complex”, continued all night. The beluga was finally able to be extracted from the lock at four o’clock, then was placed on a barge “where a health check was carried out”, indicated the prefecture. The health check confirms “the thinness of the animal” without determining the cause. “It bodes, according to veterinarians, for a poor vital prognosis”, alerted the prefecture. Tuesday August 2, a beluga, a cetacean of 4 meters and about 800 kg, accustomed to cold waters, had been exceptionally spotted in the Seine and had been since Friday in a lock in the river 70 km northwest of Paris.