A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
A humpback whale in Germany has been stuck, freed and then stuck again four separate times along the shores of the Baltic Sea. NPR's Rob Schmitz reports from Berlin.
ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: The nearly 40-foot-long humpback is a young adult who a month ago got entangled in a fish net, which is still stuck in its mouth. Since then, the whale has ended up swimming into shallow sandbars four times over a four-week period, says Burkard Baschek of the German Oceanographic Museum.
BURKARD BASCHEK: It's like an ongoing story. He's, like, again and again, coming to shore and shallow water. And we try to keep him up and swimming, but he's in a not so good state. And so the chances for him to actually swim back into the North Sea are slim.
SCHMITZ: Baschek says the whale is also suffering from a skin disease brought on by the low salinity of the Baltic Sea, a body of water where he says humpback whales are only seen once every few years. The problem now, he says, is that the whale is effectively stuck in the relatively shallow and highly trafficked Baltic, hundreds of miles away from the deeper and safer waters of the North Sea.
BASCHEK: It's about 500 kilometers that he needs to manage. There are, like, smaller passages through islands. It's shallow. So it's something that would be, like, really hard for him to find.
SCHMITZ: Baschek and his team have spent days out in boats attempting to startle the whales so that it swims back into deeper water. But their ongoing efforts have caused a firestorm of attention from social media influencers. They've criticized the scientists' every move. And some have even launched personal attacks on the scientists that German police are now investigating.
BASCHEK: Of course, we are also very emotional about the whale. And we know that it's also expected and also the right thing in that moment to rescue the whale. And we've done everything to do so. But the question is to which extent?
SCHMITZ: It's a question Baschek's team has now answered. In the past day, the whale is again lying on a seabed near an island and appears too weak to swim any farther. Baschek says hopes of coaxing the animal out of the bay were so slim that it would be cruel to try. Officials say an exclusion zone has been set up around the whale so it can die with dignity.
Rob Schmitz, NPR News, Berlin.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCADE FIRE AND OWEN PALLETT'S "SONG ON THE BEACH") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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