A 47-feet-long blue whale, the largest mammal in the world, was rescued after it was beached near village Madban, close to Jaitapur nuclear power plant in Ratnagiri district on Sunday morning.
Estimated to weigh around 20 tonnes, the whale was beached for over two days. Local fishermen spotted the mammal on Saturday evening and informed forest officers. On Sunday morning, two boats with 50 personnel carried out the rescue operation over eight hours by pulling the mammal into the sea with the help of ropes during high tide.
“Four forest officials led the rescue operation along with local NGOs and fishermen, and the whale was pulled into deep sea by Sunday afternoon,” said N Vasudevan, chief conservator of forest, state mangrove cell. “The whale was stranded along the shoreline during low tide on Thursday or Friday. We can only assume this because the animal was out of the water when it was found and its ribs were visible.”
BR Patil, range forest officer, Ratnagiri said, “The animal could have suffered an injury or an internal parasitic infection due to which it lost its navigation abilities and moved closer to the shore. However, after the massive rescue operation, we saw the whale speed its way back into the deep sea.”
Vasudevan added that this was one of the biggest rescues in India. “After the beaching and death of a whale at Juhu, Mumbai and the safe rescue earlier this year from Ratnagiri itself, the sheer size of the mammal makes this the biggest rescue of beached mammal in history.”
The blue whale (Balaenopteramusculus) falls under the red list of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and schedule 1 of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1986.
“Being marine mammals, large whales are not designed to support their weight on land and the body crushes itself under its own weight,” said MihirSule, member of Konkan Cetacean Research Team.
