Hessy the 20ft humpback whale comes up for air in the Thames
A HUMPBACK whale nicknamed “Hessy” has been spotted in the Thames, prompting marine rescue divers to be put on standby to prevent it coming to harm.
The mammal, thought to be about 20ft, was last night wallowing near the Dartford crossing east of London, having swum back and forth up and down the river for miles since Sunday.
The sightings, which led to a warning for ships to slow down, come a year after a Beluga whale nicknamed Benny spent three months in the same part of the Thames, attracting large crowds.
The animal eventually found its way out to sea.
However, the last humpback to venture into the Thames, in 2009, died of starvation after getting stranded.
Experts believe the new humpback to be in good health and its presence indicative of increasing numbers over the past decade, a legacy of an international ban on hunting the species since the Eighties.
The whale was first spotted off Gravesend on Sunday.
It has since headed upstream, under the Dartford crossing, towards Erith, before turning around and swimming to Greenhithe.
The sightings stunned river users. One, a constable with the Metropolitan Police Marine Policing Unit, spotted the creature during a night-time patrol, tweeting: “It was spectacular! Was gobsmacked it was so big.” Another was one of several to adopt the nickname Hessy for the animal after seeing it near Ford’s Dagenham plant yesterday morning. “Unfortunately it’s headed further in,” she tweeted.”
British Divers Marine Life Rescue, a specialist charity dedicated to freeing stranded and endangered marine animals, is closely tracking the whale.
“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,” said Julia Cable, from the group.
“It seems to be moving along quite happily. It’s very likely that it just made a navigational error.”
Richard Sabin, principal mammal curator at the Natural History Museum, said: “I don’t think we need to be concerned at the moment,” he said. “There are no signs of injury – it’s swimming and diving.”
In 2006, a juvenile female northern bottlenose whale became a cause célèbre after it was discovered far into London near Battersea Bridge.
The decision was taken to rescue the animal as she was considered too weak to swim out of the Thames by herself. However, she died of convulsions after the attempt.
The 2009 incident was the first time a humpback whale was spotted in the river.
Mr Sabin said increases in the population of the species in waters around the British Isles was a “great success story”.