Timmy, a young humpback whale that had been stranded in shallow waters for weeks, was found dead off the coast of Denmark, weeks after it was released in a controversial rescue operation, according to the Danish Environmental Protection Agency.
“The humpback whale that was stranded near Anholt is the same whale that was previously stranded in Germany and was the subject of a rescue operation,” Jan Hansen, head of the Danish Environmental Protection Agency division, told CNN on Saturday.
The agency confirmed the whale’s identity after an agency worker discovered and retrieved a faulty tracking device that had been attached to the whale during the rescue.
“The location and appearance of the device confirmed that this was the same whale that had been previously observed and handled in German waters,” Hansen said.
Timmy was found on Friday near the island of Anholt, located in the Kattegat strait between Denmark and Sweden, about 130 kilometers from where he was released.
He was first spotted in the port of Wismar in early March when he became tangled in a fishing net and had to be rescued by emergency services. He then got lost and stranded in late March in shallow water near Timmendorfer Strand, the small town on Germany’s north coast that gave him his nickname. This sparked extensive rescue efforts and widespread media coverage, with the whale’s suffering broadcast live around the world. But rescuers were unable to free the whale and stopped the rescue as its health deteriorated.
In late April, Timmy was transported to the North Sea on a submerged barge. – Philippe Dulian/AP
However, another privately funded rescue operation, which instructed Timmy to swim into a barge and transported him to the open ocean, continued despite warnings from scientists that the whale was too weak to survive.
While he was trapped, he was nearly motionless for days, breathing irregularly and suffering from poor skin conditions due to the low salt content of the Baltic Sea.
Such warnings have mired the rescue in controversy.
To critics, this represents an act of animal cruelty that causes severe stress on the whales for no apparent reason.
“I believe the whale will die soon,” Thilo Maack, a marine biologist with Greenpeace, told The Associated Press in April as rescuers tried to rescue Timmy. “I also want to ask the question: What’s so bad about this? … Yes, the animal lives, the animal dies. This animal is really, really, really, really sick. It decided to seek rest.”
But for others, like the province’s Environment Minister Till Backhaus, who allowed private rescue operations to continue, telling The Associated Press it was a normal reaction to “take advantage of even the smallest opportunity when lives are at stake.”
The Danish Environmental Protection Agency added that there are currently no plans to remove Timmy’s body as “it is currently not considered to cause a problem in the area”.
It urges people to keep a safe distance and not to approach the whale for health reasons and to prevent it from exploding.
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