This whole Timmy story boils my piss. We treat humans much much worse, but barely bat an eyelid. We destroy all nature thus impacting animals like Timmy, but we barely bat an eyelid at that either.
Saving one whale as a token of how well we’re doing… fuck right off.
What that article conveniently leaves out: The head veterinarian of those self coined “whale savers” is specialised on small animals (e.g. your cat, guinea pig, and hamster) and has no experience whatsoever with aquatic mammals, let alone large whales. She does like the challenge of trying something new, though, that’s surely gonna make up for the lack of experience. A veterinarian from Hawaii with relevant experience quit the team weeks ago because she was afraid of losing her license back home over assisting those lunatics in their endeavour.
The entire operation is largely a PR stunt by influencers and other questionable characters, tolerated by a spineless and clueless environmental minister who is sacred of causing a shitstorm by doing the right thing, ending the whale’s suffering as quickly as possible.
Intesting. Can you give some form of source please?
I did a Google news search for “buckelwal” (German for the humback whale) and there is no shortage of articles. Every actual expert seems really bothered by what is going on.
It has been all over the German media, it, of course, is all in German, but I’ll look something up.
https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/panorama/tiere/id_101236960/rettung-von-wal-timmy-expertin-rechnet-mit-aktivisten-ab-.html Scathing interview with a veterinarian, who actually has some experience with large whales.
The state minister, Till Backhaus, is one of the weirder aspects of the story. At first he said something to the tune of “Yeah it’s a whale, that sorta stuff has always happened in the Baltic Sea. People need to get a grip lol” until public interest grew nationwide and the rich dudes started their campaign to rescue the whale. At that point, minister Backhaus suddenly went like “Yeah I spent the night in the water next to the poor guy, he’s willing to fight and we definitely need to help him!”
Spineless weasel with no sense of responsibility. Typical politician.
Yikes, this sounded exciting at first, but after reading a few German news articles, this sounds like a total mess.
I’m glad to see people excited about trying to help an animal, even at great expense, but good intentions don’t make animals healthy again. After seeing comments from actual marine biologists and others actually qualified to speak to the health of this animal, it doesn’t look like there’s actually been any medical checks on the whale, just “vibes.”
Working at a wildlife rescue, we see so many people further injure and often kill animals by attempting to help on their own. They aren’t built like us, have very different medical and dietary needs than us, and so on. It is very sad to see.
We always have to weigh the price of any potential cure against the misery that animal will be in while we attempt to make it better. It is one of the hardest parts of the job, but as the marine biologist in this article said, some animals die. We wouldn’t suggest humans be subject to this type of treatment, and most of us wouldn’t support keeping someone who is suffering alive longer than they are truly viable, but yet most will have no issue with what is essentially doing unscientific experimentation on a suffering animal.
If this works out, great, but like any other medical thing, we have trained experts for a reason, and not liking what they have to say doesn’t change the reality.
Whale researcher and marine biologist Fabian Ritter, co-founder of the association M.E.E.R., expressed clear skepticism to NDR. His biggest concern: the noise. “What worries me is the volume. That will be very loud for the whale. And whales and dolphins live in a world of sound. They are extremely sensitive.” He compared it to holding a bright lamp in a person’s face for three days. He also lacks a blood sample or an analysis of the blowing air so far. (Source)
Yes, this was my first thought after seeing the pic too - that is absolute torture, what a fractured mess could emerge from that after such a prolonged exposure … :(
Ppl involved should suffer (bad) consequences.
Ppl involved should suffer (bad) consequences.
This is something that we need to be mindful of as rehab people.
The one rehab training video I’ve seen starts with this internet famous cat rehab lady going off on people. It then explains she can get away with that because people like cats and dogs. People are familiar with them, feel they understand them, and so on. People will keep helping cats and dogs even if this lady annoys them and lectures them. Wildlife rehabbers don’t get that benefit, and trust me, some people will infuriate us by messing with nature, or are downright hostile to us for existing like we’re as hated as the IRS or DMV or something. We have to wait until you leave for us to talk about how we really feel. Because helping wild animals is hard, inconvenient, expensive, and poorly understood. If we lecture people or tell you about how you sealed this animal’s fate, people will never come back to us again. They will spread the word how trash we are and discourage others from helping animals.
And having to remain cool does help a bit too, I think. We can’t undo the dumb people have already done, but hopefully we can get some better advice to sink in for next time. Honestly, it’s hard to be mad at people who honestly think they were helping. It is nice to see these strangers pooling together and taking all this time and spending all this money to try to help. It would be many times over better if they would just leave it to the trained people and accept when something can’t be saved. We don’t enjoy putting animals down, but sometimes a humane end is the best we can offer if the damage is already done. Put that money and effort towards animals that aren’t at the end of their lives. It’s better for everyone, animals included. Once Timmy is tossed into the sea and that boat turns around and everyone goes back to ignoring whales, what did we really accomplish, even if he does swim away? If they aren’t giving it actual medical help, they likely haven’t tagged it or anything to see if this paid off.
I just want them to learn something. Develop a solid love for animals, learn to do things that actually do save them, get involved on a local or national level to help them, fund the people that do if they can’t personally. They have the right mindset to make a positive difference, but stuff like this is just starting down the wrong path for what they want to accomplish, and for their sake and the animals, I don’t like seeing that because it just goes poorly for everyone involved.
