Injured in the muzzle probably by the propeller of a boat, a whale was stranded, this Friday, on a beach of Flisvos near Athens in Greece.
This ziphius cavirostris whale, a fairly common species in the Aegean Sea (East) and the Ionian Sea (West) as well as off Crete (South), had been spotted the day before about fifteen kilometers from this beach.
A team from the Arion cetacean defense association had tried to direct it out to sea.
Images broadcast on public television ERT show a veterinarian taking a blood sample from the cetacean which weakly moves its tail in the water.
A small whale is currently on the Athenian Riviera very close to the shore…The coastguard is trying to intervene to help it, it would be injured 😢 #greece https://t.co/tbYIzq4Z1K
— Marina Rafenberg (@MarinaRafen) January 28, 2022
Since then, significant resources have been dispatched to the site.
"A port patrol boat and divers from the Greek Cetacean Rescue Center of Arion are on hand to rescue the whale," said an official from the Coast Guard's press office.
In recent months, many whale strandings have been recorded in Europe.
According to Pelagos Institute biologist Alexandros Frantzis, “the mammal may have been disoriented due to ongoing seismic research” on hydrocarbons in the Gulf of Kyparissia in the Peloponnese (South-West).
This gulf is “one of the four main habitats in the world.
We are destroying their home (…) for hydrocarbons,” he lamented.
