It is a protected cetacean species, usually living in cold waters, which made an incursion … into a French river: the French authorities and NGOs were mobilized on Friday to rescue a beluga spotted since Tuesday in the Seine. The beluga was seen for the first time on Tuesday and the animal was on Friday afternoon between two locks halfway between Paris and the Norman port of Le Havre, where the Seine flows into. The French authorities have appealed for caution and asked “the entire population not to attempt to approach or come into contact with the animal”. “Even trying to approach it with great care, it’s difficult. It makes a lot of changes in direction,” said Gérard Mauger, vice-president of the Cotentin Cetacean Study Group (GEEC).
Beluga in the Seine: we are with him currently, the animal is extremely thin. The absolute urgency is to try to feed it, which we are going to do today. The success of the operation will depend on his reaction. pic.twitter.com/wq7wiMu8XX
— Sea Shepherd France (@SeaShepherdFran) August 5, 2022
Friday, the beluga had “the same behavior as yesterday, we have the feeling that it is very fleeing. It makes very short appearances on the surface, followed by long apneas”, added the association manager. According to the Sea Shepherd association, the Seine, “very polluted” and “very noisy” due to heavy navigation, is not “very welcoming” for cetaceans who are sensitive to noise. And as of Thursday, the health condition of the beluga, which measures 4 meters in adulthood, was deemed “worrying” by the prefecture of Eure, a department in northwestern France where the animal was spotted. . He “seems to have skin changes and be thinner,” said the same source. Approaching about fifty meters, “we made acoustic recordings, with our engines cut, but he did not make any sound emissions”, regretted Mr. Mauger.
Emergency
In May, an orca found itself in difficulty in the Seine. The operations to try to save the cetacean failed and the animal finally died of starvation. The necropsy – a post-mortem examination carried out on an animal – confirmed the “poor physical condition” of the orca, an “immature” female of more than four meters and 1,100 kg and made it possible to discover a bullet lodged in the base of the mammal’s skull. This sad outcome, “this is what we want to avoid with the beluga. For us, we must do a DNA test quickly to find out its origin and carry out a repatriation”, declared to AFP the president of Sea Shepherd. , Lamya Essemlali.
“The emergency is to feed it with dead fish, probably frozen herring, to prevent it from running out,” she added. According to the Pelagis observatory, a specialist in marine mammals, this is the second beluga known in France after a fisherman from the Loire estuary (Centre) had brought one up in his nets in 1948.