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Whale, thought to be injured, stranded on Athens beach
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Lifeguards and experts from ARION cetacean center rescue a small whale that got stranded on a beach in a suburb of the Greek capital Athens, on January 28, 2022. (AFP/Aris Messinis)
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fforts were underway on Friday to rescue a small whale, apparently weak and injured, that got stranded on a beach in a suburb of the Greek capital.
Live whale sightings are rare in Athens.
State TV ERT showed a vet taking a blood sample from the mammal as it bobbed in waist-high waters off Trocadero beach in the coastal suburb of Palio Faliro, weakly moving its tail.
Coastguards kept watch from a dinghy nearby.
Aimilia Drougas, an oceanographer from the Arion cetacean rescue centre, identified the mammal as a Cuvier's beaked whale.
She told AFP the whale, apparently an adolescent from its size, had a snout injury and had originally appeared on Thursday a few kilometres to the south, in the suburb of Vouliagmeni.
Arion staff had tried to coax it out to sea, but it had returned, she said.
"From the footage it appears quite injured... In such cases, usually it does not end well," Drosos
Koutsoubas, a professor of marine biology at the University of the Aegean, told Skai TV.
Alexandros Frantzis, a marine biologist at the non-profit Pelagos Institute, told ERT the mammal could have become disoriented due to ongoing seismic research for hydrocarbons in the Gulf of Kyparissia in western Greece, one of its main habitats.
"It's one of the four most important habitats in the world for these animals."
"We are destroying their home...for hydrocarbons," Frantzis said.
Although sightings of live whales are extremely unusual in the capital, whale carcasses occasionally wash up, mainly in the Greek islands.
A large whale carcass was found off the coast of Piraeus in 2020, while another was discovered on a small island near Crete in 2016.
Cuvier's beaked whales can dive up to 4,000 metres and usually grow to up to seven metres (23 feet) in length, Drougas said.
