Hope and concern for freed whale swimming off German Baltic coast

Experts remain concerned about a humpback whale that surprised rescuers by freeing itself from a sandbank off Germany's Baltic Sea coast.

On Friday afternoon, the animal swam out of a bay near the city of Lübeck, but remained close to the coast.

A spokeswoman for the Sea Shepherd conservation group said the whale had been spotted further east off the coast of north-west Mecklenburg district.

Members of Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace initially accompanied the animal in inflatable dinghies but ended their monitoring operation after several hours.

Environmental campaigners and police officers plan to head out again on Saturday, a Greenpeace spokeswoman said.

She said this would depend on being able to locate the whale's position. She asked members of the public to help by reporting or posting on social media any whale sightings.

On Friday afternoon, the humpback whale was swimming in a zigzag pattern off the coast, the spokeswoman said.

Biologist Robert Marc Lehmann said the key factor was whether the animal remained in open water and whether it would decide to swim towards the North Sea.

He said the whale was not yet safe, and that it would only be home once it reached the Atlantic.

Hard to track

After days of efforts by numerous volunteers, the whale freed itself overnight through a channel excavated by a dredger in a sandbank off Timmendorfer Strand. The humpback whale had been discovered on the sandbank on Monday morning.

A Sea Shepherd spokesman said that on Friday the whale had at times headed back towards shallower water.

He said that the conservation groups had used their dinghies to form a kind of blockade to prevent it from entering shallow water again, and that they were trying to guide it further into the deeper waters of the Baltic Sea.

Stephanie Gross of the Institute for Terrestrial and Aquatic Wildlife Research (ITAW) said that large whales had occasionally appeared in the Baltic Sea, remained there for weeks, but had eventually found their way back to the saltier waters of the North Sea.

She said it was not technically possible to track the marine mammal's course, as no transmitter had been attached to the animal because its skin was too diseased.

World watches rescue effort

The initial movement of the whale away from Timmendorfer beach prompted great joy among all those involved.

Local Mayor Sven Partheil-Böhnke said: "I am incredibly relieved and very, very glad and satisfied with how the operation went."

Schleswig-Holstein state premier Daniel Günther (CDU) also expressed his delight at the rescue.

The whale's fate had moved people across Germany and abroad. Many locals had watched the rescue operation from the shore.

Partheil-Böhnke said: "I think we all need this after the terrible news of recent months, after wars and crises. This is the one piece of good news and that alone is reason enough to be happy."

Large whales such as humpback whales are not native to the Baltic Sea. They may follow schools of fish in search of food and end up in the Baltic Sea.

According to experts, underwater noise could also play a role.