Sail-World.com : Baby Whale - Still Searching for Mum
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Baby Whale - Still Searching for Mum |
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'Baby whale nuzzles Javelin beside Blackwattle'
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 | Mother talk to me - .. . |
'The Basin' is normally a placid anchorage in Sydney's deeply sheltered Broken Bay - small ferries putt-putting, ducks feeding, seagulls, a pelican or two. But this morning the air is tense and the noise of engines is all pervading.
Sydney's motherless baby whale, which was led out to sea a couple of days ago, has sadly come back into protected waters looking for Mum, and found herself in the comparatively shallow waters of 'The Basin'..
Little does she know it, but she is followed by a horde. There are several boats from the National Parks and Wildlife Service(NPWS) patrolling, and 'stranding experts' from ORRCA the volunteer rescue and research organisation for cetaceans. More volunteers are arriving, I am told, and the NPWS has called in  | Baby whale swims under Bonny Doon wharf in the Basin - photo by Nick Moir, SMH - .. . |
'whale experts'. The NPWS is warning any entering boats to stay away, and eventually even the ferry is prevented from reaching the Bonny Doon wharf nearest the calf.
Then the press starts to arrive - by water taxi, by chartered yacht, by ferry, even by the 5 kilometre walk through National Park - there's no public road to this bay. Helicopters hover noisily overhead – three of them, no doubt from opposing channels. When not filming the whale, circling in the shallow water, they film each other and if they can't find an 'expert', interview each other too.
The baby whale, oblivious, is deep into the Bay and is nuzzling a yacht on a temporary mooring. She sidles up and bumps the yacht continually, displaying, I am told, typical whale nuzzling behaviour. The owner appears on deck, and uses his mobile  | ORRCA volunteer Shona Lorigan - ’on the spot’ monitoring. - .. . |
phone a lot before motoring out of the bay. Deprived of the latest prospect for a feed, the baby floats on the surface for a while, and the photographers lunge for their cameras.
Apparently searching for a new mother, the whale now swims under Bonny Doon Wharf, much to the delight of the gathered local residents, who hale from houses buried in the bushland above
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'I had tears in my eyes watching her,' said local resident Louise Brogan. 'She is so little, and we feel so helpless.'
The whale now finds another, yacht, Javelin, owned by the Brogans, and we watch as she moves the yacht round on its moorings trying to get a response.
'The prognosis is not good,' says Shona Lorigan, a volunteer with ORRCA. 'She has been days now without nourishment. We can't do anything but monitor her behaviour, try to keep the public away, but we are all trained for stranding, and will be there to help if she strands herself.'
'We estimate that she is between one and two months old, and we can tell by her behaviour that she is weakening. We just want to avoid as much stress for her as possible.'
When I ask her for the prognosis, however, she merely looks sad and shakes her head.
Soon our own yacht Blackwattle, is hemmed by the exclusion zone, and the baby calf, about the size of a pilot whale, nuzzles fruitlessly at the yacht next to us.
The story is not ended, but it's more and more doubtful that it will be a happy one.
Background Information and why her fate is doubtful:
The fate of the baby humpback whale will most likely be decided by vets from Sydney's Taronga Zoo. The vets hope to be able to assess the health of the calf and whether it can survive. If not, the calf may have to be put down.
While NPWS had been investigating options to care for the whale in captivity, there were no facilities in Australia large enough to suckle a baby whale for its 11-month suckling period and to provide it with its nutritional needs, he said. The whale already weighed more than a tonne, and would grow further during the 11-month period. After that, it would need to feed on krill - a small crustacean - which would require that it be transported to the Antarctic where krill was present, he said.
All of this was 'extremely difficult to do and our advice is that in Australia, and quite likely in the world, there is not facility to deal with this'.
Mr Dengate also revealed that the baby whale would probably have been contacting other pods of whales travelling up and down the coast, as whales could communicate up to 10 kilometres under water. However, it looked unlikely that the whale's mother would return or that another lactating adult whale would adopt it, he said, and it was likely that the whale had just days to live.
by Nancy Knudsen
2:29 AM Wed 20 Aug 2008 GMT
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