{"id":445295,"date":"2026-05-16T21:14:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T21:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/445295\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T21:14:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T21:14:07","slug":"timmy-the-whale-confirmed-dead-by-danish-authorities-whales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/445295\/","title":{"rendered":"Timmy the whale confirmed dead by Danish authorities | Whales"},"content":{"rendered":"

Timmy the whale has been confirmed dead by Danish authorities two weeks after the beached humpback was transported to the North Sea in a rescue attempt <\/a>criticised as \u201cpure animal cruelty\u201d.<\/p>\n

Denmark\u2019s Environmental Protection Agency said a whale had been found dead on Friday near \u200bthe small \u2060island of Anholt in the Kattegat, a broad strait between Denmark<\/a> and Sweden, and confirmed it was Timmy on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Jane Hansen, division head at the Danish Environmental Protection Agency, said in a statement: \u201cIt can now be confirmed that the stranded humpback whale near Anholt is the same whale that was previously stranded in Germany<\/a> and was the subject of rescue attempts.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added that conditions on Saturday made it possible for a Danish Nature Agency employee to locate and retrieve a tracking device that was fastened to the whale\u2019s back, and \u201cthe position and appearance of the device confirm that this is the same whale that had previously been observed and handled in German waters\u201d.<\/p>\n

The 10-metre-long calf became a global sensation after it was spotted stranded on Timmendorfer beach, a sandbank in shallow waters off the coast of Germany, nearly two months ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As its health deteriorated, German officials gave up trying to rescue the mammal, saying they believed it could not be freed.<\/p>\n

But after a national outcry, two millionaires in Germany said they were prepared to pay \u201cwhatever it costs\u201d to release the creature.<\/p>\n

The rescue attempt \u2013 which is believed to have cost about \u20ac1.5m (\u00a31.3m) \u2013 involved floating Timmy away from the sandbanks and into a water-filled barge, which was pulled by a tugboat from Wismar Bay near the German city of L\u00fcbeck to deeper waters off the coast of Denmark.<\/p>\n

It was criticised<\/a> as \u201cinadvisable\u201d by the International Whaling Commission because the male juvenile, nicknamed Timmy after the beach where he was stranded, appeared to be \u201cseverely compromised\u201d and was unlikely to survive after its release.<\/p>\n

Experts from the Oceanographic Museum in Stralsund on Germany\u2019s Baltic coast also recommended Timmy should be left to die in peace.<\/p>\n

The young whale was described as lethargic, weak and covered in blister-like blemishes after spending weeks in water with low salinity. Parts of its mouth were believed to have been caught in a fishing net.<\/p>\n

The museum\u2019s director, Burkard Baschek, warned that trying to save Timmy amounted to \u201cpure animal cruelty\u201d.<\/p>\n

After being released from the barge into the North Sea on 2 May, the whale was observed blowing through its blowhole and swimming freely \u201cin the right direction\u201d, according to Karin Walter-Mommert from the rescue initiative.<\/p>\n

Later, however, it emerged that a tracker intended to monitor Timmy\u2019s progress was not working. In a joint statement earlier this month, Walter-Mommert and her co-financier, Walter Gunz, one of the founders of a leading electronics chain, distanced themselves from the manner in which the whale was released.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hereby expressly distance ourselves from the events and the manner in which the whale was abandoned,\u201d they wrote, calling for \u201cany consequences\u201d to be borne \u201cby the owner, the operators, and any crew members of the ships Fortuna B and Robin Hood\u201d.<\/p>\n

The whale was found dead about 70km (45 miles) south of the location of its release two weeks ago.<\/p>\n

Hansen said the Danish authorities had \u201cno concrete plans to remove the whale from the area or to perform a necropsy, and it is not currently considered to pose a problem in the area\u201d.<\/p>\n

She urged people to stay away from Timmy\u2019s body, due to the possibility it may carry diseases.<\/p>\n

Speaking to the Guardian on Friday<\/a>, before the identity of the dead whale was confirmed, Amy Dickham, a professor of wildlife conservation at the University of Oxford, said there were many lessons to reflect on from the case.<\/p>\n

She said: \u201cIt\u2019s really striking that there\u2019s been such a focus on this individual animal at such great cost during a time of great crisis for wildlife funding around the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is really questionable whether it was a good use of funds, particularly compared with issues that impact much greater numbers of whales, such as collisions with vessels and entanglements with fishing gear.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Timmy the whale has been confirmed dead by Danish authorities two weeks after the beached humpback was transported…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[85,46,141,386],"class_list":["post-445295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445295","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=445295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}