by Nick
Australian military offers to help save baby whale
August 21, 2008 in Uncategorized by Nick
Australia’s military offered on Thursday to help save a baby whale abandoned by its mother in a bay north of Sydney as wildlife experts fought to stave off its starvation within days.
The humpback whale, nicknamed “Colin” by Australian media, was found attempting to suckle off a moored yacht at Pittwater after being abandoned by its mother off Australia’s east coast.
“Our hearts are breaking with what’s happening with baby Colin. It’s looking bleak, but every effort is being made,” New South Wales state premier Morris Iemma said after the military volunteered floats to try to get the calf back to sea.
Vets were taking blood samples from the one- to two-week old whale to see how much it had weakened and whether it should be put down. Efforts to pair it with a surrogate mother from a migrating whale pod have so far proved fruitless.
“To look after this little whale, you need to suckle it for 11 months, that’s never been done anywhere in the word before for a whale this size or for that long,” Environment Department spokesman John Dengate told Australian television.
“You then need to get it to the Antarctic where its food supply is. Letting it go off Sydney, it’s got a 2,000-km trip to make. It doesn’t know how to avoid killer whales or how to find krill,” Dengate said.
With time running out and rescue efforts becoming more desperate, an Aboriginal “whale whisperer” was brought to the bay to “talk” to the calf, Australian television reported. Colin had apparently responded, the report said.
Australia’s military offered an empty fuel bladder as an inflatable raft to tow 5.5-meter (18-ft) Colin out to sea, but Dengate said rescuers were more likely to rely on two pontoons offered by the Sea World theme park on Australia’s Queensland coast.
If vets thought the animal was strong enough, the calf would then be towed offshore and released near a pod of passing whales.
“Even getting it out to sea doesn’t mean saving the whale,” said Australian Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon.
The whale’s struggle to survive has captivated Australians, who strongly oppose Japanese scientific whaling and flock to whale-watching tours during the annual migration to the Antarctic and back to breed in warmer Australian waters.
On Monday a team of workers towed the private yacht out to sea to try to lure the calf into deeper water, hoping that it would find its mother or another passing whale pod, but it was spotted close to the beach at Pittwater again on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Rob Taylor, editing by Roger Crabb)
