There's a hurt, lost whale calf in London's river
There was a small and injured whale calf that seems to have become lost in London's River Thames on Monday, and authorities say its life is in danger hundreds of miles from home.
It was first spotted on Sunday and rescuers worked through the night freeing it after it became beached on concrete.
Video posted on social media shows a man dousing it with a water hose before authorities arrived. It's a minke whale, which only grows to be about 30 feet long as an adult.
Rescuers eventually got it onto a special pontoon and brought it a mile downstream, with the hope that it could make its way back to the ocean, but it was later spotted by Reuters swimming several miles upstream instead.
London's port authority says the calf's life hangs in the balance and it will eventually run out of river. It's not clear where the calf's mother is.
It's very rare for whales to come into the River Thames. The port authority says the calf would have come from the North Sea, the divide between Great Britain and Norway.
