River Thames whale

The River Thames whale was a juvenile female northern bottlenose whale which was discovered swimming in the River Thames in central London on Friday 20 January 2006. According to the BBC, she was five metres (16 ft) long and weighed about seven tonnes (24,400 lb). The whale appeared to have been lost, as her normal habitat would have been around the coasts of the far north of Scotland and Northern Ireland, and in the seas around the Arctic Ocean. It was the first time the species had been seen in the Thames since records began in 1913. She died from convulsions as she was being rescued shortly after 19:00 GMT on 21 January 2006.

On Thursday 19 January reports from the Thames Barrier control team were made to the British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) that one, or possibly two, pilot whales had come through the barrier. This turned out to be the Bottlenose whale, and BDMLR commenced monitoring the whale that evening.

At 8:30 am on Friday 20 January, David Dopin was on a train when he phoned the authorities to say that he believed he had been hallucinating, as he thought he had just spotted a whale swimming in the River Thames. Throughout the morning, more and more whale sightings were reported, confirmed when television cameras captured the Bottlenose whale on video.

The whale beached several times during the day as the tide went out. Members of the public went onto the foreshore to encourage the whale back into deeper water. Concern began to grow for the animal; Bottlenose whales are used to swimming in seas up to 700 metres (2300 ft) deep, but the Thames has a depth of only 5 metres (16 ft) at most. Blood was also visible.

As night approached, there were signs that the whale may have been swimming with the current out of London towards the sea: an unconfirmed sighting by a BBC cameraman at 9:00 pm placed the whale in Greenwich. The area was searched but nothing was found. There were no further official sightings until 1:10 am the following morning in Battersea, after the tide had changed. The whale was monitored until 3:30 am, when Jamie Henn, a Marine Mammal Medic working for BDMLR finally called the monitoring off as the whale would not strand at high tide.

...
Wikipedia