A whale found on a beach near the southernmost tip of Bengal on Thursday morning was released into the Bay of Bengal early on Friday, said forest officials.

Shifting the 15ft whale, weighing at least several hundred kilos, involved over 40 men, including forest personnel and villagers.

“We made a bamboo ramp with a tarpaulin sheet and fishing net as the base. The whale was lifted on the ramp to a boat which sailed into the sea and released it around 1.30am on Friday. The operation needed more than 40 men. The sea was very rough at the time of the release but our men did a
great job,” said Nisha Goswami, divisional forest officer of South 24-Parganas forest
division.

The whale was spotted on a beach near Lakshmipur village in Kakdwip, around 90km from Calcutta. It was alive but struggling, forest officials said.

“We got the report on Thursday morning, but by the time our staff reached the spot, high tide had set in. We could not locate the whale. We were able to locate it when after the water started receding. We had to wait for the water level to rise again to release the whale. We cordoned off the area after the rescue. Once high tide set in, the whale was released into the sea,” said a forest official.

Dipani Sutaria, an ecologist studying marine cetaceans (aquatic mammals like whales and dolphins) in India, saw the pictures and identified the animal as a Bryde’s whale, one of the four confirmed species of baleen whales found in Indian waters.

Baleen whales are cetaceans with baleen plates and not teeth, like dolphins. Baleen plates act like a sieve, filtering the whale’s prey from seawater. Baleen is made out of keratin, the same protein that makes up human nails and hair.

The other three species found in Indian waters are Blue whales, Omura’s whales and Humpback whales.

“Bryde’s whales use nearshore waters, the shelf slope and offshore seas. Like other large whales, Bryde’s whales sustain injuries from vessel collisions; get entangled in fishing nets and are impacted by ambient underwater noise,”. Sutaria said.

“Based on information from the database on www.marinemammals.in, this is the fourth record from West Bengal. A resident population of Bryde’s whales are present in the Swatch of No Ground — off the Sunderbans in the Bay of Bengal,” she said.

Goswami, the DFO, said there were no injury marks on the whale. “It seemed healthy. It could have been washed ashore by the tidal waters and was struggling to swim back,” she said.

The website of the US-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says Bryde’s whales are found in “warm, temperate oceans including the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific”.

Bryde’s whales are named for Johan Bryde, a Norwegian, who was the first to build whaling stations in South Africa in the early 20th century, says the website.

In June 2020, the carcass of a giant whale, over 40ft-long and weighing around 40,000kg, was washed ashore at the Mandarmani beach. It was identified as an adult female Bryde’s whale.

“Going by the size, this one could have been a calf,” said Sutaria.