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Beluga on the display of a firefighter's drone: will the animal make it back into the sea?
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PASCAL ROSSIGNOL / REUTERS
Beluga whales normally live in arctic waters, one of the white marine mammals has now been spotted in the Seine in northern France.
Recordings indicated that the animal was probably separated from its group, according to the authorities in the Normandy department of Eure.
Sometimes beluga whales stray to more southerly waters and may temporarily survive in fresh water, it said.
Authorities urged people not to approach the whale to avoid stressing it.
Rescuers and environmental experts attempted to assess the whale's health.
They think about how to save the animal.
The beluga whales, which can be up to four meters long, are mainly at home off the coasts of Russia, Alaska and Canada.
Rescue over land is too risky, according to environmentalists
The emergency services have been monitoring the animal with drones since Wednesday, but on Thursday the whale had hardly moved and was drifting between two locks, as Isabelle Dorliat-Pouzet from the Eure department said.
The drone footage showed the whale swimming slowly, its white silhouette just below the waterline and surfacing to breathe.
Why the whale has strayed so far from its natural habitat is unclear.
Finally he was on the busy waterway almost halfway to Paris, he had long since passed the port of Rouen.
"The challenge now will be to feed him and try to accompany him towards the ocean," said Lamya Essemlali of environmental protection organization Sea Shepherd in France.
Retrieving the beluga from the water would be out of the question as it would be too risky for it.
The fire brigade, which monitors the whale, said that the first step was to assess the whale's health before deciding on a possible deployment.
A weakened whale had already got lost in the Seine in France in the spring.
The orca swam through the river for weeks, but the animal died in late May.
All attempts to lead him back into the sea had failed.
A month later, another whale, believed to be a 10-meter minke whale, was sighted in the Seine.
In September 2018, a beluga whale was sighted for a few days in the River Thames near Gravesend in what was then the southernmost beluga sighting on the UK coast.
Apr/Reuters