A rare visitor to the Baltic Sea is in serious trouble off Germany's northern coast. A roughly 32-foot humpback whale, believed to be a young male, has been stuck since Monday in shallow water near Timmendorfer Strand. The New York Times reports on the scramble to keep it alive and try to return it to deeper waters. Teams from conservation groups and local authorities have thus far managed to free it from some fishing nets and used boats to generate waves to wet its skin; they are now employing heavy machinery to carve a trench in the packed sand in front of the roughly 33,000-pound whale.
Experts say its best chance is to swim out on its own, though the Times notes that while the whale did move into slightly deeper waters Monday night, it swam back to the sand bar a short time later. "It may be that he was swimming and noticed he was too weak and couldn't hold himself over the water," said Sea Shepherd's Carsten Mannheimer, who is participating in rescue efforts. The Guardian cites experts who believe it would take just one or two fin strokes to get the whale into deeper waters.
The clock is ticking: lying on the seabed compresses the whale's organs, and each passing hour lowers its survival odds. Mannheimer says a healthy whale "can survive around five to six days in this state." The AP reports the whale cannot be towed into deeper water because doing so could cause it serious injuries.
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