A humpback whale that was stranded for weeks off the coast of Germany was released on Saturday in the North Sea, the culmination of an elaborate and costly rescue effort that transfixed the nation.
The 40-foot whale, affectionately nicknamed Timmy by the German news media, swam free after the fifth and by far the most complex attempt to move it. Funded by two German millionaires, the plan involved coaxing Timmy, believed to weigh some 26,000 pounds, into a water-filled barge that was half the length of a football field.
The barge was then towed out of the Baltic Sea where Timmy had been stuck and around the northern tip of Denmark, where it was set free.
Walter Gunz, one of the millionaires leading the rescue effort, said that the whale had been released Saturday morning.
“He is doing well,” Mr. Gunz said in a message, adding that the whale had blown a “great fountain” as it swam away.
Lost Whale That Captured Hearts
Humpback whales are not typically found in the Baltic, but there has been an increase in the number of strandings as human activities disrupt their food sources and ability to navigate.
Timmy was first spotted March 23, and for weeks its progress was tracked in intense detail by the German news media even as its health appeared to decline. Timmy suffered from a freshwater skin disease.
Rescuers were able to remove most of a fishing net that the whale was entangled in and hoped that would be enough for it to swim to deeper waters.
When that did not work, they dug a trench with heavy machinery to open a channel for it to swim away. The whale made it away from the coast, only to become stranded again almost immediately.
Well-wishers gathered at the Timmendorf Beach on Poel Island, about 60 miles northeast of Hamburg, with some driving hours to catch a glimpse of the whale, lying with part of its back sticking out of the shallow water. Others tuned into a live video of the mammal, rejoicing in the rare moments when it moved.
“Timmy twitches his fin!” read one of a stream of updates on the website of Bild, a German tabloid. Hope was fading.
Officials said in early April that they had abandoned further rescue plans and would leave the whale to die.
But media attention only intensified, and a public outcry followed. Though the whale barely moved, crowds formed on the beach each day to watch. One day in mid-April, a 67-year-old woman jumped off a boat to try to get close to Timmy but was stopped.
The whale held on. In mid-April, local officials approved a sophisticated operation funded by a pair of multimillionaires to use air cushions and pontoons to move the whale.
A Breakthrough
When that failed, rescuers came up with a last-ditch plan: a barge in which Timmy could be towed to the ocean. Rescuers used a small channel to guide the whale into the barge.
In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Gunz, who founded the consumer electronics company MediaMarkt, declined to say how much he had donated to the rescue mission. He said that he had become involved because he believed every creature in danger should be saved.
He said he was thrilled that Timmy had made his way onto the barge and that he thought the whale sensed that rescuers wanted to help it.
“He actually swam in there all by himself,” Mr. Gunz said. “He proved all those people wrong who said he wouldn’t be able to swim anymore.”
Kevin Robinson, the executive director of the Cetacean Research and Rescue Unit, a Scottish nonprofit agency, said that rescuers should consider whether an animal was suffering, and whether that suffering was being prolonged by attempts to help. Still, he endorsed the barge effort because “I have never seen an animal survive a situation like this for so long.”
“Just a shame it wasn’t attempted from the very beginning,” he said.
Uncertain Outlook
Though rescuers said that they expected Timmy to recover in his more suitable habitat, more than 200 nautical miles from where he was stranded, experts said there was no guarantee that it would survive for long.
“Even short-term survival is very questionable,” said Burkard Baschek, the director of the Ocean Museum Germany and the scientific coordinator of the second and third rescue efforts. The whale was extremely weak, having made very little movement over the past few weeks, and suffered from other issues in addition to the freshwater skin disease, he said.
The stress of being in a barge, including the loud echo of the water splashing against the steel hull, was also probably difficult for the whale, Dr. Baschek said.
“I know how sad it is to have an animal dying at the beach where you can watch it,” he said. But the rescue, he added, was “not increasing its survival chances.”
Dr. Baschek said that he was heartened by how much empathy for the whale had spread over Germany and the world. But he noted that more than 300,000 whales and dolphins die every year after becoming entangled in fishing nets. He hoped that attention in the future would focus not on rescue operations but on making oceans safer for marine life.
John Yoon contributed reporting. Tatiana Firsova contributed reporting from Berlin.
