BRITAIN: A postmortem examination was yesterday being carried out on the whale which swam up the River Thames in London to find out why it had strayed so far from its deep-sea feeding grounds in the North Atlantic.
The investigation is being led by Paul Jepson, a veterinary pathologist at the Zoological Society of London who specialises in examining the bodies of stranded marine mammals. The autopsy is being performed at Gravesend in Kent, where the barge carrying the northern bottle-nose whale finally put in.
The 18-foot-long creature, which appeared in central London on Friday morning and beached itself several times, was lifted out of the water near Battersea Park on Saturday afternoon by experts from the British Divers Marine Life Rescue. They had hoped to transfer it to a larger vessel to take it to deeper waters in the English Channel. However, the whale's condition deteriorated as it was being carried downriver, so plans were made for an earlier release at Shivering Sands off the Kent coast.
At 7pm, the whale suffered convulsions and died.
Dr Jepson, who was on the barge, said: "The odds were slim that we could successfully rescue this whale . . . We were very worried about its condition as its respiratory rate was too high . . . Unfortunately, it did deteriorate very quickly. A decision was made to euthanase the animal on welfare grounds. Before this could take place, the whale sadly died."
He took comfort, nonetheless, from the publicity. "Many children may remember seeing this bottle-nose whale in London and in future I hope they may become marine mammal enthusiasts and conservationists."
Tony Woodley, a director of the BDMLR, defended the decision to intervene. "We believe that if the whale [ had] been left, then it would have just slowly died, and we don't think that was the acceptable option."
The rescue operation is believed to have cost about £100,000 sterling.
Large numbers of spectators lined the embankments and bridges in central London on Saturday to catch a glimpse of the whale. Millions more watched on television.