Patti Mac (@pepalouise.bsky.social)

Stranded and dying, the German whale is a parable of our troubled relationship with these sea giants For weeks now, a humpback whale has been trying to die. Entangled in ropes, it had wandered into the shallow Baltic Sea. Unable to feed, it is now subject to extreme dehydration, since whales satisfy their thirst through the fish they eat. In such a parlous situation, the whale’s last resort was to strand itself on Poel Island, in the Bay of Wismar. Sadly, it has been a slow death. Beached whales die because they are crushed by their own weight. The German humpback’s agony may have been prolonged because it lay in shallow water and was thus only partly submerged. On Thursday, streamed live on YouTube, one final desperate attempt was being made to rescue the whale by inflating cushions under it before floating it out to sea. A whale laid at our feet is a powerful parable. Our empathy with the giants of the sea must be set against the fact that we are shrinking their world. In our relentless push for economic progress, we have managed to reduce the vast ocean to an extension of ourselves. The result is clear: there is almost nowhere in which these animals are able to live peaceful, sustaining lives without being... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/18/stranded-dying-german-whale-troubled-relationship-sea-timmy