Fin-tastic sight ... a whale ahoy in the Thames
Enthusiasts track 26ft ‘humpback’ along the river for three and half hours
A WHALE spotted in the Thames could be the first humpback in the river for 10 years, experts said today.
Multiple sightings of the 26ft mammal were reported between Rainham and Greenhithe in Kent. Some enthusiasts managing to capture the creature on camera.
Julia Cable, national co-ordinator for the British Divers Marine Life Rescue group, received a call on Saturday afternoon from a diver who had spotted the whale.
On Sunday she and her crew spent three and a half hours watching its movements.
She said: “We watched it move down the river, the intervals between it surfacing are perfectly normal — it was about five or six minutes which is fine, it’s what they do.
“It seems to be moving along quite happily. It’s definitely a humpback, we’ve been looking at it every time it surfaced through binoculars for three hours. There’s nothing else it can be.”
Last year “Benny” the beluga whale lived in the Thames for three months and was regularly seen feeding in sheltered areas along the Kent stretch of the river.
The last time a humpback whale was spotted was in 2009, in the same area.
But the juvenile male humpback later died and its carcass was found in the Thames near Dartford Bridge.
Us u a l ly found in the northern Pacific, there are believed to be about 80,000 humpback whales left in the world.
“We see porpoises and dolphins but not whales. It is very rare,” Ms Cable said. “They are protected species, there isn’t much we can do. It’s just going to have to find its way out.”
David Callahan, 55, a nature writer, added: “It seems to be actively diving and feeding, I don’t know what’s driven it here, it’s a juvenile about eight metres long. It seems to be finding food and doesn’t seem to be disturbed by container ships.
“It ’s a b i g o l d thing to see in the Thames, perhaps not so much in the Atlantic.
“It’s what you expect to see on a whale-watching cruise in Hawaii, not on a walk down the Thames.”
An eyewitness, Ross Coleman, 34, said: “I saw the spout, and saw the water in the air. I thought ‘that’s a whale’, and then I saw its fin in the water. It was only about 30 metres away.”
In 2006 thousands watched as a dramatic rescue effort was launched to save a 20ft northern bottlenose whale that swam into the Thames in London after straying far from the deep waters of the North Atlantic.
It was nicknamed “the Thames whale” but it died and its skeleton is now on display at the Natural History Museum.