Early on Wednesday morning, the rescue effort to transport the lost whale back to a saltwater pool on the coast of Normandy began, writes AFP.
A team of 80 people will lift the 800-kilogram whale out of the water using a crane and place it on a barge.
There, it will be examined by veterinarians before it is moved to a refrigerated truck that will take the beluga to the sea.
"Moving the whales to a saltwater pool will allow us to monitor and help them better," says Lamya Essemlali, head of the non-profit marine rescue organization Sea Shepherd France.
Refuses to eat - risk of starvation
French authorities have previously reported that they are worried about the whale's health and it has not wanted to eat the fish they tried to feed it.
- The important thing now is that we try to understand why it is not eating and if it is suffering from any disease, Essemlali told Reuters.
White whales normally live in arctic waters around Canada, Russia and Alaska, but this four-metre-long individual has thus made it to much warmer latitudes – to a lock in the river Seine 70 km from Paris.