Towing convoy with whale is on its way to the North Sea

According to the ship tracking service VesselFinder, the convoy was about 6 nautical miles (around 11 kilometers) southeast of Fehmarn in the early morning. The transport was moving towards the island at a "very slow speed", said a spokesperson for the accompanying water police. According to plans by a private rescue initiative, 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.

In the evening, the tugboat "Robin Hood" took over the barge with the whale at the exit of the Kirchsee off the island of Poel. It then sailed with the barge filled with water into Wismar Bay and further out into the open Baltic Sea.

Rescue operation in a crucial phase

Shortly after the "Robin Hood" had taken the barge on the hook, the multi-purpose vessel "Fortune B" also set off from the port of Wismar and followed the towed convoy. According to previous plans, one of the ships will tow the motorless barge while the other accompanies the convoy.

The rescue operation entered its decisive phase on Tuesday with the transfer of the whale to the barge. Helpers spent several hours maneuvering the animal into a specially dredged channel. Members of the team pulled the whale to the barge using straps. The animal was finally in the lowered barge at 2.45 pm. A net was then set up to prevent the whale from swimming out again. Smaller boats then pushed the barge out of the Kirchsee into Wismar Bay, where it was hooked by the tugboat "Robin Hood".

Helpers pulled the whale to the barge for hours

Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's Environment Minister Till Backhaus (SPD) was relieved after the successful operation. "It really takes a load off my mind," he said in the port of Kirchdorf. "I was also on the verge of jumping into the water to help him over the last few meters." The minister confessed that he cried on the boat from where he was watching the operation.

After the operation, the helpers of the private rescue initiative embraced each other in the harbor, some of them shedding a tear of relief after weeks of anxious tension. On their arrival in the port of Kirchdorf, they were greeted by cheers and clapping from some of those present. "We never gave up hope," said an onlooker at the scene.

Experts fear for the whale's health

Prior to the rescue, experts had expressed doubts about the sense of the undertaking. "The whale's general condition has continued to deteriorate," scientists emphasized. According to the private initiative, veterinarians should accompany the animal on its journey of several days towards the North Sea in order to monitor its state of health.

According to experts, it is also unclear whether the whale will survive the transport and whether it will be able to live in freedom again in the North Sea or the Atlantic. Scientists suspect that it had repeatedly sought out shallow water before it stranded because it was weakened and wanted to rest.

First sighting of the whale in early March

According to the authorities, the humpback whale first surfaced near the coast at the beginning of March, initially in the port of Wismar. On the night of March 23, it beached itself on a sandbank off Timmendorfer Strand in Schleswig-Holstein. The animal managed to leave the shallow water via a dredged channel. However, it then did not head for the open sea and north, but swam back towards Wismar.

Finally, it swam into the shallow bay of the island of Poel called Kirchsee. There it ran aground again, swam free in the meantime, but was stranded again a few hours later at the exit of the bay. This is how the current rescue operation came about.