The operation, not “won in advance”, is scheduled for Tuesday evening and consists in extracting the beluga from the freshwater lock in which it has been retained since Friday to transport it to another, from Salt water.
Le Monde with AFP
The extraction of beluga, spotted in early August in the Seine, is scheduled for Tuesday August 9, at the start of the evening. It is an “extremely prepared” operation to try to save the cetacean. “We will have done as much as possible,” said the secretary general of the Eure prefecture, Isabelle Dorliat-Pouzet.
This operation, which is not “won in advance” according to M me dorliat-pouzet, will mobilize eighty people. The cetacean, retained since Friday in a lock about 70 kilometers from Paris, will be placed in “a kind of hammock” then in a refrigerated truck which will transport it “on straw or another element of comfort”, to the Littoral.
A seawater pool, in a lock of the port of Ouistreham (Calvados), has been made available to receive the animal, which will stay there three days – “The time that is organized its repatriation in full sea and that we observe his state of health “, according to the sub-prefect.
” Priority is to put it back in sea water “
“Today is a great day for this beluga and for all the people involved in its rescue,” said Sea Shepherd, the Ocean Defense NGO on its website . “He will be out of the water and transported to a saltwater pool, where he will be placed under surveillance and will benefit from care, hoping that his evil is curable. He will then be released at sea, with, we hope , the best chances of survival, “added Sea Shepherd, who window published photos of the preparations .
Preparations for the translocation of #Béluga in progress … https://t.co/svjmggok4w
The NGO mentioned “an obstacle course” to manage a situation “still very unprecedented in France and for which no one is prepared”. A member of the Marineland d’Antibes team (Alpes-Maritimes), Isabelle Brasseur, arrived Monday evening on the spot of the largest European zoo in Europe, estimated with the France-Presse agency that the operation was “outside of the common “, in particular due to the site.
The banks of the Seine “are not accessible to vehicles” there and “everything must be transported by hand,” said M me brewer. For the specialist, “the priority is to put it back in seawater”.
State of “stationary” health
Tuesday, the beluga was still fed on “very little” and his state of health was “stationary”, said M Me Dorliat-Pouzet. This delicate operation could induce stress in this cetacean, “which is a factor of death or discomfort for the animal” including for those in “very large form”, she said.
The purpose of the operation, at the end of his stay in Ouistreham, will be to drive beluga on the high seas, “far enough from the coasts”. “And to let nature resume” its rights, said M Me Dorliat-Pouzet. The emotion aroused by the fate of the animal has led to a wave of donations, minimizing the cost of this rescue attempt.
An orca had already been observed in the Seine in May, between Rouen and Le Havre. She had finally been found dead and an autopsy had favored an inanitual death. According to the Pelagis Observatory, a specialist in marine mammals, beluga has an arctic and subarctic distribution. It is, according to these experts, of the second beluga known in France after a fisherman of the Loire estuary had raised one in his nets in 1948.