Whale found deep in Brazil rain forest

[okarol]

Whale found deep in Brazil rain forest

Fri Nov 16, 5:41 PM ET

An 18-foot minke whale ran aground on a sandbar in the Amazon jungle some 1,000 miles from the ocean, Brazilian media reported Friday. Globo television broadcast images of dozens of people gathered along the Tapajos River splashing water on the animal, whose back and dorsal fin were exposed to the hot Amazon sun. Sea creatures rarely venture so far into fresh water.

"It apparently got separated from its group and swam upstream," biologist Fabio Luna said in a televised interview from the site. "It's very unusual."

Scientists said the whale was 18 feet long and weighed about 12 tons, and were working to dislodge the mammal and return it to the ocean.

The whale ran aground Wednesday near Santarem in Para state, Brazil's Environmental Protection Agency said, according to the Globo newspaper. Phone calls to the agency went unanswered Friday, when many government offices were closed for a long holiday weekend.

The creature reportedly is a minke whale, the second smallest of the baleen whales after the pygmy right whale, with an average length of about 23 feet.

The International Whaling Commission Scientific Committee estimates there are about 184,000 minke whales in the central and northeast Atlantic Ocean.

[goofynina]

Awww, i hope they are able to release it back to its group 

[Chris]

minke whale

[paris]

Isn't that amazing?  That poor whale. Hope he makes it.

[Sluff]

weird but I hope he catches up with the rest of the club soon.

[paddbear0000]

Poor guy!

[MyssAnne]

Awww. I hope he makes it back with the rest of the group (pod?). 

[okarol]

Environmentalists lose a whale in Brazil's Amazon jungle

1 hour, 7 minutes ago

RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) - Environmentalists have lost track of a five-meter (27-foot) Minke whale that they had freed from a mudflat where it got stuck in the Amazon jungle's Tapajos River, 900 kilometers (560 miles) from the Atlantic Ocean.

Brazil's Environment and Renewable Natural Resources Institute (Ibama) said Friday it has called off the search for the whale, which they said swam up the Tapajos after entering the Amazon River at Marajo Island.

The whale was spotted by locals beached on a river mudbank and was freed on Wednesday with the help of an Ibama team of biologists, who then followed the mammal for a few hours before it disappeared from view.

An Ibama speedboat and helicopter joined local natives in canoes searching for the whale, which it is feared cannot survive for long out of its natural, salt-water environment.

[Chris]

Hopefully he/she found their way back to their group.