The other week, something astounding happened on Hayling Island. an 8 m long Northern Bottlenose whale beached on some mudflats just to the north of Hayling in Langstone Harbour, Hampshire.

Tragically, the whale had experienced severe dehydration, which caused it to be suffering from kidney failure, when it became pinned down on Saturday night.

There was a super saving arrangement, where people tried bravely to salvage the Northern Bottlenose whale’s life. There was a time when the team thought that the kind thing to do would be to put the formidable beast to sleep with a lethal injection. But, the whale then floated out to sea again. Regrettably, it came back towards the land again and was beached for a 2nd and final time.

The medics determined that the only compassionate thing to do would be to supply the lethal injection, which they did on Friday morning. They used Immobilon, which was a very fast and lethal strength of anaesthetic.

If the mammal wasn’t 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 six metric ton mammalian, which is normally found about 3000 miles away, ended up here on Hayling Island, but it is another wonderful story that 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 Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at 6:20 pm and is filed under Dogs, Cats, Pets, Misc Stuff, Travel Hub. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.