The whale aforementioned in the entry below died last night after being linched out of the water by a crane and placed into an inflatable make-shift whale bed on a barge. The aim was to physically pick it up and take it back to the ocean. The motive was good, of course. Yet I am a bit doubtful as to whether it was the right thing to do.

Just because it happened in a populated area (ie. London) does that mean we as humans have the right to remove it? Should we just let nature take its cause, it might have swam back out itself at some point and therefore not died. In any case maybe it wanted a little vacation into freshwater, crusing past the London Eye and Westminster; the deep sea must get pretty boring. But being London, I guess it would have got in the way of large important boats.

I don’t know, I can’t be bothered on a sunday morning to make up my mind.

Hundreds of whales probably die every day, so it’s not that big a deal in the wider scheme of things. It just happened to happen in the Thames, which is unusual to us. Anyway, its dead now so I can stop talking about it.

Apparently a bottle-nosed whale has been spotted in the river Thames, London. It should be miles away in the deep Atlantic in a group of other whales but for some unknown reason it has made its way upstream through the Thames estuary. It weighs 7 tonnes and is around 5 metres long, so catching it is going to be a bit of a challenge. Rescue teams are trying to divert it back out into the ocean otherwise it might be shot before it injures or beaches itself.

Just a bit of friday craziness.

[BBC News article]