Whale spotted in central London

...swimming up the Thames!

[Syzygy]

A large whale has been spotted in the River Thames in central London by boaters and sightseers.

The mammal, thought to be a pilot whale which can grow to 20ft, was seen swimming past the Houses of Parliament.

How remarkable!

[news.bbc.co.uk...]

Syzygy

[Leosghost]

The ghost of Cyril Smith returns for the Lib Dem leadership elections ? ;)

[Essex_boy]

The Thames is meant to be cleaner now than at anytime in last 200 years, I guess this proves it.

[hannamyluv]

But at 0830 GMT on Friday, a man on a train called in to say he might have been hallucinating, but he had just seen a whale in the Thames.

hehehe, I wonder how long it took them to consider that he might not be hallucinating.

[bcolflesh]

I see whales everyday in New Jersey - I even observe their feeding habits when I eat lunch at a diner.

[balam]

Alas, the whale has died [news.yahoo.com] during a rescue attempt...

[tbear]

I can't see why the attempt wasn't made earlier, might not have changed the result, but 2 days scraping itself on the rubbish at the bottom of the Thames is not gonna help anyones condition.

Good effort by the rescue teams anyway, sad result though :(

[Matt Probert]

It's not that rare for whales to get stranded on the coast of the British isles. Admittedly we haven't had one swimming up the Thames for a long time!

What an odd people we British are? We happily hunt down <snip> animals, (formerly) including Northern Bottlenosed Whales, but when one gets into trouble we drop everything to try and help it! (Me included, I'm as mad as the rest).

Ever heard the story of the Tamworth two? No wonder people think we are mad!

Matt

[edited by: lawman at 12:49 pm (utc) on Jan. 22, 2006]

[Webwork]

Perhaps humankind just isn't getting the message:

"So long, so long, so long, so long and thanks for all the fish! [douglasadams.com]

[Leosghost]

For those who are interested in more on the subject of these whales [animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu]

[Essex_boy]

For a moment I thought this thread was about an exgirlfriend

[maccas]

They are forever beaching themself back home in New Zealand [news.google.com...] . Fourty nine of them died a few weeks back.