The informative lethargy in France became the ‘feuilleton’ of these first weeks of August. A beluga (or beluga whale) left stuck in the river, about 70 kilometers from Paris. After being stranded for more than a week, a French rescue team was able to rescue her in the early hours of Tuesday to Wednesday. Through a complex operation involving 24 divers and lasting nearly six hours, they pulled him out of the lock he was in and placed him in a refrigerated truck that would take him to the town of Ouistreham. But before it reaches the mouth of the Atlantic, vets decided to euthanize him due to a “worrying” physical condition. There was no happy ending for the missing whale.
The future of this animal has interested the French public not only because of its critical condition – substantial donations have been made to save it – but also because of the rarity of this episode. about Second white whale found in a French river since 1948. That year a fisherman found one such marine mammal in his nets in the Loire. On the Seine is the first evidence of the existence of such a whale.
In 2018, a white whale had been swimming in the Thames Estuary in the UK for three months. However, about A completely unusual presence in the rivers of Western Europe. In fact, their habitat is the cold waters of the Arctic. According to the Pelagis observatory, which specializes in marine mammals, the closest beluga population is about 3,000 kilometers from the Seine, outside the Svalbard archipelago in northern Norway. Although they go south in the fall, they never go that far.
Noise pollution, possible cause
How did this 800-kilogram marine mammal swim 130 kilometers down the Seine for more than a week? Observed in that river on August 2, How it got there is unknown.until he got stuck in a lock in the town of Saint-Pierre-la-Garenne. This question has caused some concern in France as there was another very similar case that occurred in May. At that time, an orca entered the Seine as far as Rouen, but died after an unsuccessful operation to reorient it towards the ocean. At the end of June, a minke whale was also spotted at the mouth of the same river, near Le Havre.
“Beluga and killer whale are herd animals that normally live in groups. Now at one point they found themselves alone. something abnormalGérard Mauger, vice-president of the Corentin cetacean studies group, assured the French newspaper Le Progrés in his remarks. as warned by NGO Sea Shepherd FranceOne of the possible reasons for the loss of a Beluga rescuer could be the noise pollution of the sea.
“First of all, we suspect. noise pollution. We humans tend to underestimate noise pollution in the seas. Cetaceans have a radar to move around and communicate with each other. It is an essential element for your survival. But noise pollution confuses them, and in the worst case it can cause injuries and internal bleeding.”
This unifying manager, in particular, offshore wind farm construction On the Seine Estuary: “We know these infrastructures are very noisy”. “We fear that the deployment of offshore wind farms on the coast of France, especially in protected areas, will have disastrous consequences for marine life,” he added.
“Multiple Factors”
However, other experts and associations characterize the ultimate impact of offshore wind farms in these attacks. The Pelagis observatory reminds us that these may be due to “multiple factors”, for example “your health, your age (young whales tend to disperse more easily), social isolation or environmental conditions.”
Oceanographer François Sarano told AFP that climate change is among the possible causes. increase in sea temperature affect ocean currents and they can take marine mammals to areas that are very unusual for them. Additionally, Sarano addressed the impact of rapid changes in the position of Earth’s magnetic poles. The list of hypotheses about the influx of cetaceans causing the ink rivers to flow in France is long.
Source: Informacion
