We are heading towards a sad outcome.

Five days after being discovered in the Seine, the beluga, which usually lives in cold waters, still did not eat this Sunday and showed signs of illness, leaving "little hope" for a happy outcome.

Asked about the chances of saving the animal, Lamya Essemlali, head of Sea Shepherd, the ocean defense NGO present on the scene, confided that the experts and the authorities were faced with "a challenge", where there has "little hope", evoking "a race against time".

vain attempts

Since Friday evening, the beluga, a four-meter cetacean spotted on Tuesday in the Seine and whose presence in this river is exceptional, has been in a lock measuring approximately 125 m by 25 m 70 km north- west of Paris.

Several attempts to feed him have been unsuccessful: herring, trout and even squid... On Saturday, the veterinarians, "given the beluga's physiological state", had given him "vitamins and products likely to open his stomach." 'appetite,' said the Eure prefecture on Sunday morning in a press release.

If the beluga adopts "a calm behavior" in this basin of the lock of the Garenne where it entered by itself, "it is very thin and presents cutaneous alterations due to its presence in fresh water", notes the prefecture.

The pessimistic specialists

If the products administered have not "opened his appetite", he is a little "more dynamic" in the water, noted Isabelle Dorliat-Pouzet, sub-prefect of Evreux during a press briefing, underlining that belugas could be "very resilient".

According to Sea Shepherd, this lack of nutrition is nothing new.

“His lack of appetite is surely a symptom of something else, an origin that we do not know, a disease.

He is undernourished and it is several weeks, even several months.

At sea, he no longer ate,” explained Lamya Essemlali.

Also, on Sunday there was little time for optimism about the animal's chances of survival and the fear that it would suffer the same fate as an orca found in the same river in May was growing.

The operations to try to save the cetacean had failed and the animal had finally died of starvation.

However, the option of euthanizing the beluga was "discarded for the moment", indicated Lamya Essemlali, because "at this stage it would be premature because it still has vigor, a curious behavior: it turns the head, it reacts to stimuli, it is not amorphous and moribund”.

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Beluga stuck in the Seine: The option of euthanasia "discarded for the moment", says Sea Shepherd

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The beluga stuck in the Seine still does not feed

  • Paris

  • Seine

  • Dolphin

  • Sea Shepherd

  • Ile-de-France