The Buckelwal surfaces before Baltrum in the North Sea
Bottlenose whales are not frequently found in the North Sea. A younger specimen has been spotted by a ship's crew off Baltrum. An expert speaks of a "rare guest" and has a theory why the young whale is there.
A rarely occurring bottlenose whale has been sighted off the eastern Frisian Island of Baltrum in the German North Sea. The crew of a surveying ship made a recording of the animal at the end of June, according to Thea Hamm, responsible for marine mammals at the National Park Administration Niedersächsisches Wattenmeer in Wilhelmshaven. This was undoubtedly a younger bottlenose whale. "These are very rare guests in the German Bight", said the expert. Several media had reported on the sighting earlier.
Bottlenose whales grow to be 12 to 15 meters long and can weigh up to 30 tons. They live in polar seas and migrate to calve in tropical waters. "They have to swim back and forth for that", said Hamm. The exact routes are not known, but usually, bottlenose whales migrate from Iceland and Norway, moving westward towards the British Isles. "Calves are more adventurous than adult animals", said the biologist. It is possible that the calf took a different route through the North Sea.
Scientists also spotted a bottlenose whale
Approximately six weeks ago, a bottlenose whale was also spotted in the North Sea. Scientists from the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation are currently investigating as part of a research project how common whales are in the North Sea. According to a report, the experts registered numerous sightings of minke whales, humpback whales, and also one bottlenose whale from a ship. The area the researchers are studying, the Doggerbank, is located further in the central North Sea - about 250 kilometers from Helgoland.
Bottlenose whales are occasionally spotted off the German coast. In early April, a whale caused a stir at the Schleswig-Holstein Ostsee coast. At that time, the whale swam in circles in the Flensburger and Kiel Fjord. Experts from NABU assumed that schools of herring had attracted the whale to the Ostsee coast.
Since 2003, according to the Wattenmeer Protection Station, there have been almost annual sightings of individual bottlenose whales at the Dutch coast in the Wattenmeer. In winter 2012, a 12-meter long bottlenose whale stranded on a sandbank off the island of Texel in the shallow Wattenmeer and died despite all rescue efforts.
The bottlenose whale spotted off Baltrum is an uncommon sight in the North Sea, as international data suggests they typically reside in polar and tropical seas. Recently, scientists from the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation reported another bottlenose whale sighting during their research project in the central North Sea.
