The minke whale that washed ashore on Heist beach on Sunday has been returned to the waters of the North Sea. The animal appeared to be healthy and measured 6 metres in length. Life guards guided the whale back into the sea on three occasions on Sunday.
Sunday morning, life guards spotted the cetacean in shallow water in the seaside resort of Knokke-Heist (West Flanders). ‘We immediately tried to pull the animal into deeper water, but that proved impossible,’ said chief life guard Dries Hautekiet.
The animal is a 6-metre minke whale weighing a few thousand kilograms. ‘The animal is much larger than the fin whale that washed ashore off the coast of Ostend last year,’ says Jan Haelters of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (KBIN).
‘The animal ended up on dry land on the beach. The life guards were able to keep it wet. They dug a kind of pool where the animal could remain lying down. They laid wet towels on top of it and poured buckets of water over it.’
In addition, a bulldozer was used to dig a trench so that the minke whale could swim back to the open sea more quickly. A plastic tarpaulin was then pulled under the animal, after which around 15 people guided it back towards the sea for a first time at around 4 p.m.
‘The next few hours will remain crucial,’ says Kelle Moreau of the Natural Sciences Institute. ‘The animal stranded several times. Life guards pushed it back into the sea on each occasion. Since the third rescue attempt, there has been no sign of the animal.’
