A male orca washed up on the beach in De Panne at the weekend. Sadly, the creature was destined to die. It is very rare for an orca to turn up in the southern North Sea. An autopsy is taking place on the beach today. Experts hope it will show why the animal had become too weak to continue swimming.
The animal was first spotted off the coast of the resort of Koksijde around 9am on Sunday morning. "The first pictures were taken from a distance and were very unclear, but from 10 o'clock onwards we were able to follow the animal and identify it as an orca," says Kelle Moreau of the Institute of Natural Sciences.
"The animal swam very slowly from Koksijde towards De Panne. It did not look alive and swam close to the shore. That's not what you would expect from an orca."
Several hours later, around 3pm, the orca washed up on De Panne beach. "Together with the rescue services we tried to discourage the animal from coming closer to land, but we did not succeed. The animal stranded on the beach at high tide. That will unfortunately mean the end of the animal."
De Panne Mayor Bram Degrieck takes up the story: "It is a young adult animal about six metres long and we have also given the animal a name: Reveil."
"Orcas are found on the Scottish coast and on the north coast of Spain. That's not that far away," says mammal spotter Billy Herman, who followed the animal this morning and quickly determined it was a male. "They have fins 2 metres high" he says.
"Orcas are group animals and normally live in families," says Kelle Moreau of the Institute of Natural Sciences.
"But young males leave the group at a certain age to start their own herd. So it may not seem all that exceptional that this male was found alone, but it is. Especially here, in the southern North Sea, the animals are rare."
A rare occurrence
An orca on the Belgian coast is very exceptional. Since 1900, there have only been four sightings and the last orca stranding in Belgium dates back to 1850. In October last year, a female orca washed ashore on the coast of Cadzand, in the Netherlands. That animal did not survive either.
Orcas hunt fish and seals. "In itself, there is plenty of food here," says Jan Haelters, biologist at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. "But it is strange and very exceptional that they come so close to our coast here."