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    Its whale migration season
    From: Peter Fogg
    Date: 2008 Aug 21, 12:34 +1000

    'Impossible' to look after baby whale

    • August 21, 2008 - 11:04AM

    It is not physically possible to look after an abandoned humpback whale calf that is swimming alone and starving in Sydney's Pittwater, experts say.

    Different wildlife authorities are debating whether to euthanase a 4.5 metre baby humpback, which has been nicknamed Colin, rather than allow it to starve to death.

    It is thought Colin may have a biological problem, which led his mother to abandon her calf.

    The baby whale, believed to be about two to three weeks old, was first spotted on Sunday, nuzzling up to a yacht in an apparent search for its mother.

    NSW National Parks and Wildlife spokesman John Dengate believes Colin has only days to live.

    "It's really hard to know (how long he has)," he said on Thursday. "No one knows what his nutritional status was when he came into this area.

    "(But) he's been here now for several days. Adults of course go for months without food but a calf ... you'd think it was days more than weeks," he told the Nine Network.

    Expert vets, resuscitation groups and universities were currently assessing the baby whale's health but the prognosis was grim, Mr Dengate said.

    "What they're all telling us is that it is not actually physically possible to look after a whale like this pretty much anywhere else, let alone in Australia," he said.

    "It's looking like it's too big a mountain to climb," he said. "We're racking our brains ... But we need to be realistic about this."

    The challenges involved with raising the mammal in captivity were immense.

    "To look after this little whale, you need to suckle it for 11 months, that's never been done anywhere in the word before for a whale this size or for that long," he said.

    "You then need to get it to the Antarctic where its food supply is.

    "Letting it go off Sydney, it's got a 2,000km trip to make. It doesn't know how to avoid killer whales or how to find krill.

    "There's a whole range of extremely serious problems with the idea of getting this little whale through to getting it released in the wild ...

    "That's the advice we're getting from every single expert that we've spoken to," he said.

    An expert vet from Seaworld was arriving in Sydney on Thursday to assess the whale.

    Military equipment might also be used to help float the mammal, Mr Dengate said, but he added that options were "absolutely running out at this stage".

    The whale was on Thursday "moving around fairly quietly, fairly calmly" but his condition, according to a vet, was "ok but deteriorating".

    Baby Colin's plight has tugged at the heartstrings of Sydneysiders - and the world - with many frustrated that the calf was not being fed and that no concrete plans were being made for the humpback's future.

    Federal Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon said Colin had captured the imagination of all Australians.

    "It's hard not to be sad when you see that calf in such a desperate situation," he told Macquarie Radio on Thursday.

    "I've asked my department to look at any options that we might have to assist ... (but) we are yet to receive any advice that practically would be successful.

    "Even getting it out to sea doesn't mean saving the whale," he said.

    © 2008 AAP


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