He still doesn't come back.
Like every day, Jean-Claude Hedevin, retired passionate about photos of migratory birds in the region of Calais, will survey, in the early morning this Thursday, the great beaches of Pas-de-Calais.
Suddenly, in the distance, he sees "a large mass on the beach", he tells Le Parisien.
If the septuagenarian first believed that it was a makeshift boat used by the thousands of migrants in the sector to try to reach the United Kingdom, he will quickly make an unprecedented discovery after decades of walking around in this sector.
Calais on February 10, this morning a humpback whale stranded on the sand
Posted by Jeanclaude Hedevin on Thursday, February 10, 2022
“As I approached, I realized that it was a whale.
Impressed !
I've seen beached dolphins before but never a whale.
I never thought I'd find a dead one, it's a place where there are usually a lot of seals.
It must have been brought by the tide and the currents”, supposes this fishing enthusiast.
He quickly informs the competent associations and authorities of his discovery.
According to initial findings, this humpback whale is almost ten meters long.
Such a discovery remains an “exceptional” phenomenon according to a specialist.
The animal will be autopsied on the beach
“This 9.53 m whale was stranded on Fort Vert beach.
It is a female.
It is an exceptional phenomenon for the region,” said Jacky Karpouzopoulos, president of the Mammalogical Coordination of Northern France (CMNF) and “responsible for strandings” in Nord-Pas-de-Calais, confirming information from France. 3 Hauts-de-France.
This whale, which weighs "between 20 and 25 tonnes", must be taken out of the "swing zone" of the tides on Thursday afternoon "so that it does not go back to the sea".
It is a dead body and "it can be dangerous for navigation", added Jacky Karpouzopoulos.
Read alsoThirty dolphins stranded on the island of Ré
With the help of “heavy machinery”, we will “pull her up the beach as high as possible” and on Friday “we will do her autopsy”.
“We will open the animal on the beach, cut it up and the whale will go to be rendered,” he said.
"This type of stranding is quite rare on our coast, the passage of cetacean migrations taking place further north of England", explained Yoan Demassieux, one of the caretakers of the League for the Protection of Animals (LPA) at Calais.
This whale "died only a few hours ago, it is possible that she was surprised by the numerous sandbanks here on the beaches to the east of Calais" and "that she died of suffocation by her own weight “, he says, without ruling out the possibility of a possible illness.
In November, a fin whale of 19 m and about fifteen tons, was stranded in the port of Calais after being injured.