“We would like him to eat, but if he does not react positively it will become complicated”, explains this Friday the president of the NGO Sea Shepherd, Lamya Essemlali.
The beluga, spotted Tuesday in the Seine, entered a lock Friday evening, 70 km from Paris, a situation which represents a “risk of additional stress” for this cetacean, which refuses to feed.
The lock in which entered the beluga, a protected species of cetacean usually living in cold waters, is now closed and prohibited to navigation until further notice, according to the prefecture of Eure.
The president of the NGO Sea Shepherd, Lamya Essemlali, lamented that “attempts to feed in the river have so far not interested the beluga” but that there is still hope that “it will be different in the lock”.
“We would like him to eat, but if he does not react positively it will become complicated”, she continued about the animal, now isolated in the lock of Notre-Dame de la Garenne near of Vernon, 70 km northwest of the capital.
“We must act quickly”
She was pessimistic about the possible consequences if the animal does not eat: “veterinarians specializing in beluga whales tell us that we must act quickly, its state of thinness being very advanced, and take it out of the water to provide him with care promises to be very difficult”.
Gérard Mauger, vice-president of the Cotentin Cetacean Study Group (GEEC) continued to observe the beluga on Friday. “It has the same behavior as yesterday, very fleeting. It makes very short appearances on the surface, followed by long apneas.”
Approaching about fifty meters, “we made acoustic recordings, with our engines cut, but he did not make any sound emissions”, he regretted.
According to the Pelagis observatory, which specializes in marine mammals, this is the second beluga known in France after a fisherman from the Loire estuary had brought one up in his nets in 1948. In 1966, another individual had went up the Rhine to Germany and in 2018, a beluga was observed in the Thames estuary in England, recalls Pelagis.
“These cases of wandering remain unusual and unexplained, with probably multiple reasons such as health status, age (subadults disperse more easily), social isolation, environmental conditions, etc. observatory.
