The apparently underweight whale was first spotted on Tuesday in the river that flows through Paris to the English Channel. On Saturday it had reached about 70 kilometers (44 miles) north of the French capital. “He is quite emaciated and seems to be struggling to eat,” Isabelle Dorliat-Pouzet, a senior police official in the Eure department in Normandy, which is overseeing the rescue operation, told a news conference. Rescuers tried feeding it frozen herring and then live trout, but it didn’t seem to take it, he said. It is hoped that injecting the animal with vitamins will stimulate its appetite, he said. Divers with the French environmental police brigade search the Seine for the beluga whale. Photo: Christophe Petit-Tesson/EPA Authorities were deciding whether to keep the animal in the waterway so it could regain its appetite or drive it back to sea, he said, adding that no decision had yet been made. He said small spots had appeared on his pale skin, but scientists had not yet determined whether these were a natural phenomenon due to the fresh water or signs of health problems. On Friday, Gerard Mauger from the marine conservation group GECC told AFP that despite being a highly social mammal, “it behaves like yesterday. it seems very crazy. It only surfaces for a short time, followed by long dives.” Judging by the sonar recordings, it was also emitting very little of the chirps and rapids that whales are known for, raising further concerns about the animal’s health. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST Beluga whales are usually only found in the cold Arctic waters, and while they migrate south in the fall to feed on ice formations, they rarely venture this far. An adult can reach four meters (13 feet) in length. It is only the second recorded sighting of a beluga in a French river since 1948, when a fisherman in the Loire estuary found one in his net. The sighting comes just months after a killer whale – also known as an orca, but technically a member of the dolphin family – ran aground in the Seine and was later found dead between Le Havre and Rouen in late May. An autopsy found the animal, more than four meters long, had likely suffered exhaustion after being unable to feed, although officials said they also discovered a bullet lodged in the base of its skull – although it was unclear if the wound played a role at his death.
