Lost Baby Whale Mistakes Yacht for Its Mother, Later Put Down
by Jasmin Malik Chua, Jersey City, USA 
on 08.22.08
Photo credit: Getty Images
This is the most heartbreaking story we've read all week, and if the idea of a baby whale trailing after a yacht and trying to suckle from it doesn't make you go "awww," then that lump of muscle you call your ticker has been replaced by sheet rock. (And you should really get that checked out.)
The 1- to 2-month-old humpback whale calf, which Australians dubbed "Colin," was first spotted last week in waters off north Sydney clinging next to a yacht it had apparently mistaken for its mom. After rescuers towed the yacht out to sea, the calf—described by rescuers as being "exhausted"—finally detached from the boat but remained close by.
Although rescuers tried to lure the dazed and confused, not to mention endangered, calf out into the open sea, hoping it would continue its search for its mother or hook up with another pod of whales, Colin wouldn't budge. Even an aboriginal "whale whisperer" couldn't work his mojo.
Eventually, Colin, who in addition to not having eaten for a week suffered from shark bites and had trouble breathing, was given a sedative and then a lethal dose of anesthetic. The National Parks and Wildlife Service said in a statement that it had no way of feeding the Colin in captivity because it hadn't been weaned yet.
That's it, we're breaking out the hankies. Where was Hayden Panettiere when we needed her? ::CNN .com and ::BBC News
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Unfortunately, the Australian National Parks decided to euthanise her because she could not be enticed out to be adopted by another pod of whales and was starving and shark-bitten:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7577185.stm
Thanks for the update, Chris...please excuse me, I'm going to be depressed for the rest of the day now.
Could this be linked to the Japanese "scientific" whaling research?
heartbreaking.
I would like to know if we don't have a method to nourish a whale yet. I mean we are technologically advanced in so many thing but we cannot give some food to an endangered animal and put him/her away from the sea until grown up? Oh, come on! That is sad.
Very sad.
This link tells of an anonymous philanthropis aims to buy the sea world franchise, create interactive holograms instead of amnimals, and have all the animals in seawolrs "collection" be returned to the wild. Not a hoax, pretty cool yes?
http://philanthropy.com/news/?id=5485&pth&utm_source=pt&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_content=lefttop
Oh wow. This story is so sad. I wish we had some way to save the baby whale.
A whale carcass has washed up on a beach several hundred kms south of Pittwater. The body will be DNA checked to see if it's Colin's mother.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/08/22/2343816.htm