Acta Marine salvages dead whales
Acta Marine has salvaged a dead humpback whale and towed the corpse away to deliver it to the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, on the Texel island.
The operation took place under supervision and contract of the Netherlands’s Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment.
The humpback whale of more than 12 m. length, with a weigh of 12,000 kg., was still alive when it beached six days earlier on a sand bank nearby our homeport Den Helder. Regrettably, various attempts by specialists and authorities failed to save the life of the gigantic mammal.
In the night from 17 to 18 December Acta Marine’s vessel “Coastal Fighter” succeeded during her first attempt at high tide to refloat the dead whale from the sand bank. Biologists will examine the corpse and will also try to find out what caused the unfortunate beaching. The beaching of alive humpback whales is a very rare event in Western Europe. Immediately thereafter, the same vessel also salvaged the corpse of a sperm whale that was washed ashore in the same area.
Acta Marine donates 25% of the revenues of these activities to the fundraising action Serious Request. This annual event of Dutch radio station 3FM and the Red Cross is this year organized to fight worldwide baby mortality.
