A humpback whale that had been struggling to survive after beaching near the German coast has been released into the North Sea off Denmark after being transported in a barge, a member of a rescue mission said.<\/p>\n
Dubbed “Timmy” by the German media, the whale was first spotted stuck on a sandbank on 23 March near the city of Luebeck before freeing itself and then becoming stuck again several times.<\/p>\n
The whale left the barge it had been towed on from Wismar Bay on the Baltic coast at around 7.45am Irish time, said Karin Walter-Mommert from the rescue initiative.<\/p>\n
It is now swimming on its own and freely, and at least for the time being, in the right direction, she said.<\/p>\n
At the start of April, German officials gave up on trying to rescue the animal, saying they believed it could not be saved.<\/p>\n
But this triggered an outcry and authorities were persuaded to approve a privately financed rescue plan proposed by two wealthy entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n
The barge idea was hatched after their initial attempt to save the whale with inflatable cushions and pontoons was unsuccessful.<\/p>\n
The rescue effort was seen as a long shot and criticised by experts who said it would only cause the animal more distress.<\/p>\n
The whale’s ordeal has sparked a media frenzy, with non-stop coverage from TV channels, online outlets and social media influencers, but has also led to angry spats and conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A humpback whale that had been struggling to survive after beaching near the German coast has been released…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":["post-428464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}