Timmy the stranded but rescued humpback whale lived after release for about ten days
BERLIN, Germany; WASHINGTON D.C.; OSLO, Norway; REYKJAVIK, Iceland––Contrasting and conflicting Nordic attitudes toward whales may never before have been more starkly evident than during the six-week drama preceding the May 2, 2026 return to the North Sea of Timmy the formerly stranded humpback whale.
A May 5, 2026 video clearly showing Timmy’s distinctive flukes appeared to confirm his survival for at least three days after his release.
The failure of a tracking device supposedly attached to Timmy had left his survival in doubt.
Timmy was found dead, however, on May 15, 2026, near Anholt island in the Kattegat strait between Denmark and Sweden,
Timmy drew donations & political support
Meanwhile, successful or not in the long term, the estimated $1.75 million rescue and release of Timmy was funded by donations from tens of thousands of Germans and Scandinavians, including principal project backers Walter Gunz, founder of MediaMarkt, and Karin Walter-Mommert, identified by Guardian correspondent Kate Connolly as “The owner of one of the largest racehorse portfolios in Europe.”
Political support came Till Backhaus, minister for food, agriculture, forestry, and fisheries in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany, where Timmy lay stranded for most of the time between March 23, 2026, when his plight was first discovered, until his release at sea on May 2, 2026.
Explained Science deputy news editor Martin Enserink, “Backhaus’s party, the Social-Democratic Party of Germany, is trailing the extreme-right Alternatives for Germany in polls for upcoming Parliament elections in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.”
Aligning the Social-Democratic Party of Germany with public sympathy for Timmy appeared to be a quick way to narrow the polling gap.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Norwegian & Icelandic whaling quotas
But even as Timmy the whale was released from a flooded barge into the Skagerrak, the strait dividing Denmark from Norway, the Norwegian and Icelandic whaling fleets prepared to kill quotas of 1,641 minke whales and 217 minke whales plus 209 fin whales, respectively.
The actual toll is likely to be far lower, due to lack of domestic demand for whale meat and lack of export markets, with the dwindling Japanese market long since glutted and no significant demand from anywhere else.
Norway killed only 429 whales out of a quota of 1,406 in 2025. Iceland, with just one remaining whaling company, Hvalur, and two whaling vessels, killed none.
Yet Icelandic whaling baron Kristján Loftsson, 83, makes no bones about his determination to continue to kill whales, or at least threaten to kill whales, if only to defy international public opinion.
(See Iceland fisheries minister hints she may pull the plug on whaling.)
Denmark & “The grind”
Denmark has not conducted offshore whaling since 1938, but land-based whalers in the Faroe Islands, a Danish territory, may kill more whales––though mostly much smaller pilot whales––than Norway and Iceland combined.
Offered former Miami Seaquarium veterinarian Jenna Wallace, “I believe Timmy is alive and won’t be anywhere near this,” meaning the Faroe Islands whale-killing, “but don’t expect much from Denmark. Today,” Wallace posted on May 5, 2026, “they had a ‘grind’, short for ‘grindadrap.’ “This,” Wallace pointed out, “is where children and families participate in the slaughter of hundreds of whales and dolphins.”
Meanwhile, Enserink of Science reported, “A drone video of [Timmy] on the day before his release, struggling and banging against the sides of the barge as the crew apparently tried to pull him out, has shocked researchers,” including Wallace, who according to Enserink, joined the release team for four days, but left in frustration over the direction the rescue effort was taking.
Hey Mr. Sandman, free Timmy the whale!
Initial efforts to free Timmy from the sand bar at Timmendorfer Strand, where he was first found, near Lübeck, on the German Baltic coast, failed repeatedly.
Reported Associated Press, “It is not clear why the whale swam into the Baltic Sea, far from his natural habitat in the Atlantic Ocean.”
After becoming stranded, Associated Press recounted, he “was in clear distress, breathing irregularly and often barely moving for days. Timmy also suffered from a bad skin condition, related to the Baltic Sea’s low salt content, and rescuers applied kilos of zinc ointment.
“Local media produced days-long livestreams to feed the outsized public attention over the fate of the whale. Online newspapers blasted push alerts with the smallest developments about Timmy’s health.”
Weakened, Timmy was freed from one sand bar only to repeatedly wash up on another, eventually settling on a bar near the island of Poel.
“Clicks, likes, & stupid books”
On April 1, 2026, following a week of failed rescue attempts, “scientists concluded it would be best to let the animal die peacefully,” Enserink summarized, “a recommendation the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern government initially accepted.
“But after a public outcry, the government made a 180° turnaround,” marine biologist Fabian Ritter told Enserink.
Burkard Baschek, director of the Ocean Museum Germany, called the continued rescue efforts “animal cruelty,”
“Key faces of the effort,” Enserink said, “included Danny.Firstclass, a German influencer and far-right activist whose real name is Danny Hilse, and Sergio Bambarén Roggero, a Peruvian writer of spiritual stories about the ocean frequently described as a ‘whale whisperer.'”
Wallace, in a German TV interview, “alleged that Hilse and Bambarén had endangered Timmy’s life,” causing delay in freeing him because, she charged, “the duo was in it for ‘the clicks, likes, and to sell stupid books,’ Enserink added.
Tail-pulling
After Walter Gunz and Karin Walter-Mommert funded the use of the water-filled barge, volunteers dug a channel through the sand bar to get Timmy into the barge.
“The last few days of the operation were chaotic,” Enserink described. “Drone footage showed crew members apparently trying to pull Timmy out of the barge using a rope attached to his fluke [tail]. The images appalled experts; because the fluke is made mostly of connective tissue and muscles and lacks bones, tugging on it could cause severe damage.”
Posted Wallace to her Facebook page, “I can confirm the Whale Sanctuary Project ‘Free Willy Team” was on the barge with Timmy the day of the fluke-pulling and Jeff [Foster],” a marine mammal trainer associated with both the Free Willy/Keiko and Whale Sanctuary Project, “was present the day of the release.
“I will continue to work to find out who directed the fluke-pulling the day before the release,” Wallace charged. “One thing I have learned in the captivity and the anti-captivity world,” Wallace added, “is the closer you move toward dolphins and whales, the uglier the truth gets, especially if there are money and paychecks involved.”
(See Whale Sanctuary Project may not finally get some whales after all.)
(Beth Clifton collage)
Trump favors delaying new protections for endangered right whales
The ongoing activist and media frenzy over Timmy overshadowed attention to the efforts of U.S. Representative Jared Golden, a Democrat from Maine, with the support of the Donald Trump administration, to delay new protections for the approximately 380 right whales surviving in the North Atlantic “by almost a decade,” until 2035, “in favor of commercial fishing interests,” summarized Patrick Whittle for Associated Press.
Right whales are particularly jeopardized by collisions with speeding ships, and by becoming entangled in ropes attached to lobster traps.
Right whales, recounted Whittle, “give birth off Florida and Georgia before making a long migration north to feed off New England and Canada. Protected areas of ocean aid them on their journey, but scientists have said they have strayed from those zones in recent years in search of food as the oceans have warmed.
“The White House released a memo on May 1, 2026,” Whittle disclosed, “saying it ‘strongly supports’ the plan [to delay right whale protections responding to climate change] and that President Donald Trump’s senior advisors would recommend he sign it into law if it passes Congress.”
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“…“Key faces of the effort,” Enserink said, “included Danny.Firstclass, a German influencer and far-right activist whose real name is Danny Hilse, and Sergio Bambarén Roggero, a Peruvian writer of spiritual stories about the ocean frequently described as a ‘whale whisperer.’”
Wallace, in a German TV interview, “alleged that Hilse and Bambarén had endangered Timmy’s life,” causing delay in freeing him because, she charged, “the duo was in it for ‘the clicks, likes, and to sell stupid books,’ Enserink added….”
Fame draws the crowds while those not in the spotlight languish, or worse. In my work as an advocate/activist mainly for cats, I’m reminded of this daily as those making the news get clicks, comments, and funds, while those just as deserving are fortunate to get seen at all, much less fostered and/or adopted.
Sharing with gratitude and exasperation.
“The actual toll is likely to be far lower, due to lack of domestic demand for whale meat and lack of export markets,” is a good illustration that the market protects animals more than laws, because there are always people who break the law. Poachers, for example. Education yields better results, especially in the long term. This is not to say there should be no laws.
In each society/culture/group there will always be those who are compassionate and caring and those who view the world in a defensive manner, often feeling the need to fight/battle whatever they perceive is against them.
Indeed, those who wished to assist the ailing whale––perhaps including those who felt they could also financially or reputationally help themselves––is so counter to those persons or businesses that can only see monetary profit in exploiting these treasures of our abused oceans, for, as is noted, unwanted whale meat.
This incident was ironic to the maximum on both of those counts! And again, how ironic is it that serious monies came from one who exploits horses in the less than acceptable ‘ horse racing’ business.
Since this long time animal advocate and one who joins millions of others concerned about the fast diminishing health of our oceans, I am at least pleased to note that on the whole so many citizens cared genuinely about the welfare of this one stranded whale ‘Timmy’––perhaps our species is becoming more enlightened after all.
All, that is, apart from our U.S. government aligned with the far right who can see only dollars in every animal oriented transaction (see the horrendous Farm Bill) and who expressed by their desire to strip protections from threatened right whales, SHAME––a thousand fold!