The English-speaking world has largely missed out on the story of Timmy the humpback whale. I’ve been having to follow German twitter updates to get news. English media picked up on the privately-funded rescue mission but it was not widely reported and most people know nothing about it.
Last month Timmy was spotted in the Baltic Sea which is not normally a route for humpback whales. They think he got tangled in netting and lost his way. He eventually stranded on a beach and after repeated attempts to refloat followed by stranding the authorities decided to give up on him and let nature take its course. In other words, leave him to die.
Two multi-millionaires stepped in and with the support of marine experts from around the world they orchestrated an ambitious rescue mission that has never been done before. They flooded a barge, got Timmy to swim onto it, then with the Fortuna B tug boat pulled him all the way to the North Sea. He swam off the barge just over an hour ago and is now free and on his way.
There’s good video footage in the clip below of him swimming onto the barge amidst much jubilation.
He was in poor condition during the strandings as the Baltic Sea is very low in salt which has caused skin damage. Plus he was malnourished and dehydrated but they fed him during transport and from what I read he perked up a bit.
There was much debate in Germany about what to do, if anything, for Timmy with many, including environmental groups arguing to do nothing. A German media outlet, News5Live, was live-streaming drone footage for the journey to the north sea but there’s nothing that I’ve seen so far of him swimming off the barge. I think that must have been tricky as Timmy was 12m long on a 10m wide boat. He’d have had to reverse out. Hopefully there’ll be some footage of that eventually. He’s been tracked too so we should hear something of his movements in due course.
Updates available in the Bild.
rachel.blog 
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