The dwarf whale that had gone ashore, injured, at Praia da Amoreira (Aljezur) yesterday, and which had been returned to the sea with the help of volunteers and firefighters, ended up this Sunday by being thrown back on the beach, but already dead .
According to João Duarte, one of the five firefighters from Aljezur who helped the dwarf whale, the animal had many injuries, as can be seen in the photos.
«Although the injuries were not deep, it is likely that he has internal injuries and, with the sea that was, it is not easy to survive», had João Duarte, who was the team leader at the site, commented yesterday on his Facebook page. O commander of the relief operations (COS) was Mário Costa, commander of the Aljezur Fire Department.
"We did what we could, in a first action with the help of six volunteers of various nationalities who came there and then just us, five firefighters, with the notion that other possibly more qualified entities could have at least stepped on the sand…", added. Firefighters were alerted at 14:00 on Saturday, although the animal was first sighted around noon.
Despite the area being under the jurisdiction of the Maritime Police, and being located in the heart of the Natural Park, none of these entities appeared on the beach to collaborate in the operation. This is despite eyewitnesses telling our newspaper that they saw an all-terrain PM vehicle on both sides of the bank. João Duarte, however, refused to comment on the absence of those entities.
«When we arrived, there was a Portuguese lady and two foreigners, maybe Germans» trying to help the whale. "I called a couple of Germans who were on the river side, who appeared with a sixth civilian volunteer, also a foreigner», João Duarte told Sul Informação. And it was all these volunteers, firefighters and civilians, who helped the animal, after being in the water for a long time, under torrential rain.
"We managed at this stage, when the tide did not seem to be running out yet, to drag it to a deeper area of the river, where it swam well for more than half an hour, stranding briefly on sandbanks and along the direct bank, where we easily misled it,” he added.
Yesterday, as João Duarte told our newspaper, when he was returned to the sea, the whale was injured and, «although for several moments she swam with elegance, it was noticed that she was weak and let herself be rolled up in the waves».
The state of the sea and injuries ended up dictating the death of the cetacean, which this Sunday returned to the coast, but already dead, on the same beach at Amoreira.
Photos: João Duarte and Hélio Oliveira
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