A rescue team freed a humpback whale nicknamed “Timmy” after weeks in shallow coastal waters off Germany, releasing the animal from a barge in the North Sea on Saturday, witnesses said. The whale had become stranded near the Baltic Sea coast, and its plight drew sustained attention online as efforts to guide it back toward deeper water repeatedly failed.
German media named the whale “Timmy” after it was first spotted swimming near Germany’s Baltic Sea coast on March 3, far from the humpback’s natural habitat in the Atlantic Ocean, the Associated Press reported. As the days passed, the whale repeatedly beached in shallow waters near the coastal city of Wismar, and the animal’s health deteriorated, according to witnesses.
A rescue attempt devised by a private initiative gained approval despite warnings from some in the scientific community that the plan might be too much for the animal. The environment minister for Germany’s Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania state gave the green light for the attempt to save the whale, the report said.
Jens Schwarck, a member of the private initiative who was on site, said the whale was released around 9 a.m. local time, according to the German news agency dpa. dpa reported the whale was freed 70 kilometers (about 45 miles) from the coast of Skagen, Denmark.
Drone footage showed the whale swimming and spouting water near the barge, though witnesses did not immediately confirm that the animal was indeed Timmy. Before the release, dpa reported that a GPS transmitter had been attached to track the whale’s future location.
The decision to intervene also sparked a debate over whether rescuers should attempt to return the animal to the Atlantic Ocean or let it die naturally. Activists staged protests on the beach in Wismar calling for its liberation, while others supported different approaches to transporting it, as the episode continued to attract global attention.
Some scientists argued that the whale may have been seeking shallow waters because it was weak and needed rest. The private initiative’s veterinarians, however, determined that the animal was fit for transport.
In the run-up to the release, the whale faced more than just repeated stranding. It developed a bad skin condition linked to the Baltic Sea’s low salt content, and rescuers applied kilos of zinc ointment. Local media carried dayslong livestreams and frequent push alerts about the whale’s health, feeding the sustained public focus on whether the rescue could succeed.
As the whale was moved and released, the report said it remained unclear why it had entered the Baltic Sea far from its typical Atlantic range. Some experts suggested the animal may have lost its way while swimming after a shoal of herring or during migration, and it then became repeatedly stranded in shallow waters.
MSI previously reported that German rescuers launched an air-cushion operation to save the stranded humpback Timmy on April 16, as the effort evolved from early attempts to keep the animal from beaching to later decisions focused on freeing it from the coast.