BERLIN, March 24 \u2014 Efforts are underway to rescue a whale which was spotted stranded on Germany\u2019s northern Baltic Sea coast early on Monday morning.<\/p>\n
A police spokesman said that the massive marine mammal was first sighted at around 1:50am (0050 GMT) near Niendorf in the state of Schleswig-Holstein.<\/p>\n
Initial signs are that it is a humpback whale.<\/p>\n
Attempts to rescue the mammal were made throughout the day, including by using boats to generate waves to help the whale return to deeper water.<\/p>\n
While these failed, the rescuers did manage to partially free the whale from the netting that had become wrapped around its body.<\/p>\n
The police set up barriers on land and used boats on the water to ensure that the whale was not disturbed by onlookers.<\/p>\n
Local media report that alongside the police and fire brigade, the state\u2019s Environment Minister Tobias Goldschmidt and wildlife experts had gone to assist the rescue.<\/p>\n
The NDR broadcaster said that the whale could be heard periodically making \u201cdeep, muffled\u201d sounds and that it appeared weak.<\/p>\n
It is possible that the stranded animal is the same whale that became entangled in a fishing net further east along Germany\u2019s Baltic Sea coast just under two weeks ago.<\/p>\n
A week earlier, a whale had likewise been sighted in the Baltic port of Wismar. \u2014 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN, March 24 \u2014 Efforts are underway to rescue a whale which was spotted stranded on Germany\u2019s northern…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[4387,13299,20030,85,46,172475,172476,141,172477,386],"class_list":["post-355337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-baltic-sea","tag-berlin","tag-humpback-whale","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-niendorf","tag-schleswig-holstein","tag-science","tag-tobias-goldschmidt","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}