There was celebratory mood here at Camp Borneo over the weekend after some of our partners and friends joined together to save a beached whale off the coast of Kota Kinabalu.

“Tony” the Pygmy Killer Whale obviously has discerning taste because when he decided to journey to KK to investigate he headed straight towards the swankiest Hotel in the town unfortunately beaching himself in the process on the private beach. In all seriousness, it’s still not really understood why whales beach themselves with many theories given from confused navigation due to man-made background noise (boats, sonar, building works etc) through to some unknown behavioural pattern. What is known is that once beached many whales don’t survive.

And on being discovered by staff at the hotel things didn’t look great for Tony who was too weak to stay afloat never mind eat or swim back out to sea. Luckily the people of KK are kind and resourceful and when the word was put out by the hotel to the Sabah Fisheries Department and Sabah WWF that Tony needed help, support was quickly on hand. Coordinated by our friends at LEAP (Land Empowerment Animals People) and supported by Scubazoo (Marine Production Company and CB in-laws), Borneo Dream (our awesome Dive partners) and a number of KK residents and hotel guests all under the supervision of Dr. Lindsay Porter a KK based British marine biologist, a round the clock effort began to keep Tony afloat, help him feed and slowly regain his strength.

Despite Tony being relatively small at only 2 metres in length, it still took 2 to 4 people to hold him upright through the day, into night and the next day in shift patterns, while Dr Porter assessed his status. The next day, after a call that more volunteers may be needed, seven of our current gappers arrived all willing to jump in and lend a hand should they be needed, but luckily Tony started to feel stronger and was being prepared to make his first attempt at freedom, which entailed lifting him onto a boat to take him to deeper waters, a process Tony was not particularly keen to agree to. But 3 attempts later he was heading out to sea away from the coast on a boat and was later released to cheers when he surfaced a number of times before swimming off.

Though Tony is now in the wild once again, realistically he’s still not out of danger. Fingers crossed.

PS… Tony was actually a girl. No idea who named her.

All pictures courtesy of Scubazoo… for more pictures and some videos of the rescue and release visit their Facebook page.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 17th, 2012 at 6:43 am and is filed under Borneo, Gap, Staff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.