The operation is a last-resort effort after multiple earlier rescue attempts temporarily freed the whale but failed to guide it back toward the North Sea, several hundred kilometers away. The case has drawn an outsized public response in Germany — livestreams, beach protests, police cordons, and a 67-year-old woman who jumped off a boat trying to reach the animal — and has exposed a divide between rescuers who want to keep trying and Greenpeace, which says the whale is too sick to survive the journey.
WISMAR, Germany — German rescuers launched an elaborate operation Thursday to save a sick humpback whale stranded in shallow waters off the Baltic Sea coast, using air cushions to lift the 12- to 15-meter (39- to 49-foot) animal onto a tarp secured between two pontoons for transport by tugboat toward the open ocean.
The whale, nicknamed Timmy by local media, has lain nearly motionless near the eastern German town of Wismar for days, breathing slowly and heavily. It was first spotted in the region on March 3. Experts have been unable to determine definitively why the animal entered the Baltic Sea, which lies far from its natural habitat. Some say the whale may have lost its way while following a shoal of herring or during migration.
State officials in Mecklenburg-Pomerania, the German state where Wismar is located, approved a private initiative to transport Timmy back to the North Sea — a journey of several hundred kilometers — and possibly onward to the Atlantic Ocean. If the operation proceeds as planned, the tugboat carrying the whale was expected to leave Baltic waters by Friday.
‘There’s still life in him’
Till Backhaus, Mecklenburg-Pomerania’s environment minister, said Wednesday that the whale’s condition was grave but not yet hopeless.
“He’s not active, and he’s certainly not agile, but he shows that there’s still life in him,” Backhaus said as he announced the new rescue plan. “He’s definitely suffered serious damage, that’s for sure.”
Timmy’s skin has visibly deteriorated, a condition rescuers and media reports have attributed to the Baltic Sea’s low salt content, which differs sharply from the North Atlantic waters where humpbacks are typically found.
Previous efforts failed
Attempts to refloat the whale using police boats, excavators, and inflatable boats had temporarily succeeded in freeing the animal. But Timmy never found its way back toward the North Sea and became stranded again each time, growing visibly weaker.
Not everyone supports continuing the effort. Greenpeace, which participated in earlier rescue operations, said it would not back the latest attempt.
“We do not support the rescue operation because, according to all the information we have, this whale is sick and severely weakened,” a Greenpeace spokesperson told German news agency dpa.
Crowds and a protection zone
Timmy’s plight has drawn sustained national attention in Germany. Local media have run dayslong livestreams and sent push alerts on the smallest developments in the whale’s condition. Activists staged beach protests in Wismar calling for the animal’s release, while a public debate has played out over whether the humane course is to attempt rescue or allow the whale to die without further intervention.
Police established a 500-meter (1,640-foot) protection zone around the whale to limit additional stress from bystanders. The cordon has not stopped all attempts to reach the animal: a 67-year-old woman reportedly jumped off a boat over the weekend in an attempt to approach the whale before being stopped by authorities.