When the beluga emerges to breathe, instead of ice floes, it sees green deciduous trees arching over boulder-covered banks. Instead of the cracking of ice or the many sounds his fellow belugas make, he hears people shouting: “Il est la!”, and the click of cameras. Instead of icy seawater, he feels the lukewarm, murky water of the Seine around his white body.
On Tuesday, about 70 kilometers from Paris, a beluga was spotted in the Seine, a white toothed whale that closely resembles a dolphin. “He swam around here for hours yesterday,” said Emmanuel Pasco-Viel of the Aure prefecture, who is leading the rescue operation in the village of Saint-Pierre-la-Garenne on Friday afternoon. “Then you saw his head pop up every now and then,” he says, gesturing to the water in the huge lock behind him. “It was incredible to see such a white, graceful animal three, maybe four meters long here in the Seine.” The beluga has not yet reappeared on Friday afternoon.
Pasco-Viel was impressed by the grace of the animal, but especially the sight worried him. “It can’t survive long, so far from its natural habitat.” In collaboration with the fire brigade and animal protection organizations, the prefecture is therefore trying to get the beluga to sea, but there is no perfect method. “The first hypothesis is to guide the animal northwards with sounds, but it is about 200 kilometers to the sea, so the question is how feasible that is. Another option is to enclose the animal and take it out to sea, but doing so will damage it.”
With furrowed eyebrows, about ten firefighters are busy preparing boats to feed the beluga, placing barriers, and speaking to journalists. They are concerned, and for good reason: Thursday it turned out that the beluga is very emaciated and has discolourations on the skin.
The news has now reached the whole area. Several times an hour, people drive into sleepy Saint-Pierre-la-Garenne, hoping to catch a glimpse of the animal. What is striking is the anger of the beluga spotters. “It’s time for people to wake up,” says 29-year-old cleaner Alexis Mathe, who lives about a 10-minute drive away. “It is the second time in a short time that there is such an animal in the Seine, it must have to do with global warming,” he says, referring to the orca that died a little further in the Seine at the end of May. was found and eventually died.
Retired kindergarten teacher Véronique Ozanne, who has been following the beluga with her husband Jean-Claude since Thursday, says she cannot separate the arrival of the animal from “everything that is happening now”. Jean-Claude clarifies: “With climate change and all that.” Retired mechanic Thierry Cuisse (62) believes that the arrival of the beluga shows “how ridiculous we treat animals”.
It is not yet possible to say with certainty whether climate change is the direct reason that the beluga ended up in the Seine. It’s also possible that he was confused by unexpected sounds in the water and drifted – at least the human seems to be the culprit. Pasco-Viel: “We are now mainly busy saving the animal, after which scientists will certainly look into the issue of how the animal got here.”
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of August 6, 2022