A 13-meter-long whale is at risk of dying after becoming stranded on an island in the Sea of Okhotsk in Russia’s Far East.
The whale appeared to have swum up a river estuary on the Bolshoi Shantar island at high tide and become stuck as the water retreated, a local environmental agency said on its website.
The agency warned the whale’s life may be in danger. “It is unclear how to get it back to sea,” it said.
Photos published on social media on Thursday showed the whale bleeding heavily after injuring its tail trying to wrench itself free, the agency’s deputy director Viktor Surkov told the RBC news agency.
National Park rangers on the island “risked their lives” to approach the whale in a small boat to keep it wet and alive until the tide rises, blogger Sergei Dolya wrote in a post on Facebook.
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