BoatBanter.com - New boating pastime for Londoners? Whale watching on the Thames

LONDON (Jan. 20) - A small whale swam up the River Thames to central
London on Friday, a rare event which drew large crowds of sightseers
and brought traffic to a standstill.

John D. McHugh, AFP / Getty Images
A man watches the whale from the banks of the River Thames in London
moments before he waded into the river to chase it away from the
riverbank.

But as the whale twice tried to ground itself in the shallow waters,
concerns grew that it might not survive.

As the Northern Bottle-nosed Whale beached in front of London's
landmark Battersea Power Station, three men waded into the river
hitting the water and then punching the air in celebration as it swam
off.

But it soon beached again, prompting more people to jump into the water
to move it on.

"It's unbelievable. I've never seen one of those in the wild," said Liz
Downey, education manager at the London Aquarium. "It's absolutely
incredible -- it has made our day," she told Reuters.

Police boats tracked the animal as it cautiously circled, moving
gradually upstream, and television cameras carried the images live.

Witnesses said it was between 5 and 8 yards in length and that blood
was visible in the water.

But experts were divided on what the world's deepest-diving whale was
doing in such shallow waters.

"It can dive to 3,000 meters and stay submerged for an hour," said
Peter Evans of the Sea Watch Foundation. "It will only come into such
shallow waters if it is ill. But in doing so it is committing suicide,"

Evans said it was possible the whale had been following fish upstream
and had become disorientated.

"Sighting of things like porpoises in the estuary have become more
frequent in the past five years -- indicating that fish have become
more abundant which in turn shows how much cleaner the river is than it
used to be," he told Reuters.

The Aquarium's Downey said it was not an automatic assumption that the
whale was so far upstream because it was dying.

"Assessing the health of any animal from that distance is impossible,"
she said. "It's still breathing and still swimming."

Natural History Museum expert Richard Sabin told Reuters the museum had
been recording strandings since 1913 and that this was the first record
of this species for the Thames.

A survey by the Zoological Society of London from July 2004 to June
2005 found a total of 103 sightings of 197 animals -- mostly of seals
but also harbor porpoises and dolphins.