The cetacean was extracted from a lock during the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, then, after medical examinations, took the road around 7:30 am in the direction of Calvados.
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 in Calvados, noted this Wednesday an AFP journalist. 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.
The rescue operation launched on Tuesday,particularly complex“, continued all night. The beluga was finally able to be extracted from the lock at four o’clock in the morning on Wednesday, then was deposited on a barge “where a health check was performed“, indicated the prefecture. The health check confirmsthe thinness of the animalwithout determining the cause. “It bodes, according to veterinarians, for a poor vital prognosis“, alerted the prefecture.
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It took six hours to get the cetacean weighing around 800 kg out of the water. The 24 divers engaged and the rescuers handling the ropes around the Saint-Pierre-la-Garenne lock had to try several times, between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m., to lure the animal into the nets and structure capable of lifting it out of the water.
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After being transported by refrigerated truck to the coast, it must be released this Wednesday in a seawater lock in the port of Ouistreham (Calvados), before being returned to the high seas after three days of observation. It was “longer than expected“, but “it’s a wild animal and it was a new technique, so we had to go step by step“, recalled Isabelle Dorliat-Pouzet, the sub-prefect of Évreux, welcoming the collective work of the some 80 people – divers, firefighters, gendarmes, zoologists, veterinarians … – involved in the operation which had started Tuesday evening around 10 p.m.
“It was quite amazing»
“The moment the beluga was taken out of the water in the net“, around 4:00 am, “was extremely intense and stressful because he was surprised he moved. It was quite amazing“, testified the sub-prefect, present throughout the operation. For long minutes of uncertainty, the imposing cetacean found itself suspended in the air, waving its four-meter-long white body, gleaming above the heads of its rescuers, both focused and fascinated. “As we speak, it’s an animal that resists and is alive“, she added, believing that”the operation, whatever the outcome, is a success“.
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. A killer whale had already been observed in the Seine in May, between Rouen and Le Havre. She had finally been found dead and an autopsy had favored death by starvation.
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“Today is a big day for this beluga whale and everyone involved in her rescue“said Sea Shepherd, the NGO for the defense of the oceans on its website. The NGO referred toan obstacle course to manage a situation“still very new in France and to which”no one is prepared“. The operation to bring it back to sea, if it is “extraordinary“, is not without risk for the beluga, already weakened and sensitive to stress, recalled Isabelle Brasseur, of Marineland of Antibes.
“It could be that it dies now, during handling, during the journey or at point Bin Ouistreham, she warned. According to the Pelagis observatory, which specializes in marine mammals, the beluga has an arctic and subarctic distribution. It is, according to these experts, the second beluga known in France after a fisherman from the Loire estuary had brought one up in his nets in 1948.
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