LONDON (Reuters) - A small whale swam up the River Thames to central London on Friday, a rare event which drew large crowds of sightseers and brought traffic to a standstill. ADVERTISEMENT
But as the whale twice tried to ground itself before eventually finding slightly deeper water as the tide came in, concerns grew that it might not survive.
As the Northern Bottle-nosed Whale beached next to Chelsea Bridge, three men waded into the river hitting the water and then punching the air in celebration as it swam off.
But it soon beached again, prompting more people to jump into the water to move it on.
"I am very concerned for the safety of this animal at the moment, particularly if boat traffic increases in the river," said Laila Sadler, scientific officer at animal protection charity, the RSPCA.
"It is already clearly disorientated," she told Reuters.
She said the whale would be encouraged to swim back downriver toward the sea and that experts were working on contingency plans to rescue it if it beached again.
"We are extremely worried. At 11:30 tonight (2330 GMT) we will have a very, very low tide," she said.
Members of the British Divers Marine Life Rescue group were on hand to help mount a rescue if necessary. They appealed for people not to crowd the animal.
Police and media boats tracked the whale as it cautiously circled, and television cameras carried the images live.
Witnesses said it was between 5 and 8 meters (yards) in length and some said that blood was visible in the water.
Media reports spoke of a second whale in the river's estuary at Southend in southeastern England.
Experts were divided on what the world's deepest-diving whale -- a sociable animal that normally travels in groups -- was doing on its own and in such shallow waters.
"It can dive to 3,000 meters and stay submerged for an hour," said Peter Evans of the Sea Watch Foundation, a charity dedicated to whale conservation around Britain.
"It will only come into such shallow waters if it is ill," he added. "But in doing so it is committing suicide." He said it was possible the whale, native to the northern North Atlantic, had been following fish upstream and had become disorientated.
"Sightings of things like porpoises in the estuary have become more frequent in the past five years -- indicating that fish have become more abundant which in turn shows how much cleaner the river is than it used to be," he told Reuters.
Natural History Museum expert Richard Sabin told Reuters the museum had been recording strandings since 1913 and that this was the first record of this species for the Thames.
A survey by the Zoological Society of London from July 2004 to June 2005 found a total of 103 sightings of 197 animals in the Thames and its estuary -- mostly of seals but also Harbour Porpoises and Dolphins
(Additional reporting by Paul Majendie and David Clarke)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060120/sc_nm/britain_whale_dc
Aterriza el paracaidista sobre una plaza cerca del Metro Chapultepec; huye rápidamente en una camioneta Hummer blanca sin que la policía pudiera capturarlo 
