German authorities defend risky whale rescue attempt despite expert warnings

The German authorities have defended their decision to allow a risky rescue attempt of a stranded whale to go ahead, despite experts warning it was “inadvisable” because the animal was hurt and unlikely to survive.

The saga of the whale, known as Timmy, had gripped Germany since the beached humpback was spotted stranded on Timmendorfer beach, a sandbank in shallow waters near the coast, nearly two months ago.

On Saturday the whale’s death was confirmed by the Danish authorities, two weeks after it was transported to the North Sea in a rescue attempt.

Denmark’s Environmental Protection Agency said a whale had been found dead on Friday near ​the small ⁠island of Anholt in the Kattegat, a broad strait between Denmark and Sweden, and confirmed it was Timmy on Saturday.

The agency told people to stay away from the whale’s body due to the possibility it may carry diseases, but on Sunday the Bild newspaper reported that two people had apparently posed for selfies next to the animal’s carcass.

Till Backhaus, the Social Democratic (SPD) environment minister for the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, insisted he had been right to allow the privately funded mission to go ahead, saying it was “perfectly human to seize even the slightest opportunity”.

In comments reported by Bild, he added: “It was always a matter of weighing up which option was the worst: waiting for the animal’s certain death in agony or giving him one last chance and potentially exposing him to stress.”

German officials had initially given up trying to save the whale, saying they believed it could not be freed from where it had become stranded. But after a national outcry, two millionaires said they were prepared to pay “whatever it costs” to release the creature.

The rescue attempt – which is believed to have cost about €1.5m (£1.3m) – involved floating the whale away from the sandbanks and into a water-filled barge, which was pulled by a tugboat from Wismar Bay near the German city of Lübeck to deeper waters off the coast of Denmark.

The mission was criticised as “inadvisable” by the International Whaling Commission because the male juvenile appeared to be “severely compromised” and unlikely to survive after its release. Experts from the Oceanographic Museum in Stralsund on Germany’s Baltic coast also recommended the whale should be left to die in peace.

The young whale was described as lethargic, weak and covered in blister-like blemishes after spending weeks in water with low salinity. Parts of its mouth were believed to have been caught in a fishing net.

Jane Hansen, a division head at the Danish Environmental Protection Agency, said on Saturday: “It can now be confirmed that the stranded humpback whale near Anholt is the same whale that was previously stranded in Germany and was the subject of rescue attempts.”

She said conditions on Saturday made it possible for a Danish Nature Agency employee to locate and retrieve a tracking device that was fastened to the whale’s back, and “the position and appearance of the device confirm that this is the same whale that had previously been observed and handled in German waters”.

Hansen said the Danish authorities had “no concrete plans to remove the whale from the area or to perform a necropsy, and it is not currently considered to pose a problem in the area”.