Last Monday,an awe-inspiring thing came about on Hayling Island. an 8 m long whale beached on some of the mudflats just to the north of Hayling in Langstone Harbour, Hampshire.

Unluckily, the whale had suffered from severe dehydration, which caused it to be suffering from renal failure, when it became entrapped on Sunday night.

There was a great rescue system, where humans tried bravely to save the Northern Bottlenose whale’s life. At one point the trained medics felt that the had to issue a lethal injection to put the whale to sleep. Still, the whale then swam out to sea again. Unluckily, it came back towards the harbor again and was then beached for a 2nd and terminative time.

The trained vets determined that the only compassionate thing to do would be to issue the lethal injection, which they did on Friday morning. They used Immobilon, which was a very quick acting and lethal strength of anaesthetic.

If the mammal was not put to sleep, the experts believe that it would have taken about two further days for the mammal to die, during which it would have been sick and distressed.

It seemed bizarre that the 6 metric ton mammal, which is normally found about 3000 miles away, finished up here on Hayling Island, but it is another wonderful story that this south coast little island, called Hayling brings to its history.

There were around a dozen firefighters, police, coastguard personnel as well as members of the Hayling Island harvour lifeboat staff involved in the attempt.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 30th, 2009 at 4:24 am and is filed under Pets and Other Animals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.