Heading for the North Sea Transport ship with recovered whale now off Denmark
The transport ship with the whale recovered off the coast of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania continues on its way towards the North Sea.
30.04.2026, 05:19
30.04.2026, 07:48
SDA
In the early morning, the tugboat convoy sailed off the Danish coast towards the west coast of Sweden. According to the Vesselfinder ship tracking service, the ship was about 3 nautical miles (around 5.5 kilometers) southwest of the Danish island of Sejero at around 4:45 am.
On Tuesday, the humpback whale, which had been stranded on the Baltic Sea coast for weeks, was successfully maneuvered into a so-called barge. The animal is on its way to the North Sea in this barge filled with water and towed by the multi-purpose vessel "Fortuna B". According to the plans of the private initiative responsible for the recovery, the whale is to be brought around the northern tip of Denmark through the Skagerrak into the North Sea in an operation lasting several days and then released there.
The Danish Ministry of the Environment told the German Press Agency that stranded marine mammals are not rescued in Denmark as a matter of principle. According to the ministry, strandings are "a naturally occurring phenomenon" and whales should generally "not be rescued or disturbed by human intervention". The ministry did not comment on the specific case of the humpback whale stranded on the Baltic Sea coast.
The marine mammal, which was around twelve meters long and weighed around twelve tons, had been stuck in the bay of the island of Poel for four weeks. Against the advice of many scientists, the private initiative has been trying since mid-April to recover the stranded whale and bring it back alive to the North Sea or the Atlantic.
