The tracker fitted to Timmy, the humpback whale pulled from repeated strandings in Germany’s Baltic waters, was not working after he was released into the Baltic. Three days later, his whereabouts and health remained unknown after the whale was transported to waters off the coast of Denmark.
The failed device has sharpened doubts around a rescue effort that cost about €1.5m and drew global attention when unsuccessful attempts to coax the whale toward deeper seas were livestreamed across the world. Karin Walter-Mommert, who funded part of the initiative, confirmed to German media on Tuesday that the tracker was not working.
Timmy was first spotted stuck on a sandbank on 23 March near Lübeck on Germany’s Baltic Sea coast. After that, he freed himself and became stuck again several times. As he repeatedly stranded in shallow waters near Wismar, his health deteriorated, and German authorities gave the green light for the attempt to save him. He was eventually moved in a water-holding barge pulled by a tugboat to waters off Denmark, where the last photograph showed him swimming in the strait of Skagerrak.
That sequence did little to settle the dispute over whether the rescue was ever sound. The German Oceanographic Museum in Stralsund said it believed the whale was highly likely dead and called on organisers to release the tracker data so the operation could be assessed. Marine experts had criticised the privately funded mission from the start, and some environmental activists disputed the claim that the tracker was meant to transmit vital signs.
Fabian Ritter said that if the device failed to yield information, it would be an all-round catastrophe for both the whale and the rescue team. He added that if it was not possible to determine whether the whale had died, the entire operation would have been in vain. Danish authorities had already said they would make no attempt to rescue him if he was later found to be in difficulty.
For now, the whale’s fate is the unresolved fact at the center of a public operation that was expensive, visible and, by the account of its critics, possibly pointless. If the tracker stays silent, the final judgment on Timmy’s rescue will rest on a mission that spent millions and may still be unable to say what happened at sea.