Young Gray Whale Spotted Off French Coast After Rare Mediterranean Journey

In early March, Wally, a calf about 15 months old and measuring 7 meters, had been observed in Morocco, in Italy in recent weeks, in Naples, then Rome and Genoa, reports France info. Its presence in the Mediterranean is a rare fact because its population lives mainly between Baja California in winter and Alaska in summer.

The young whale was filmed just a few meters from the coast in Antibes, right next to the Fort Carré, on Thursday around 9:40 am, on the beach of the Fort Carré in Antibes. "I was fishing, I heard the sound of a breath, I didn’t understand, it came up 10 meters from me!" says Thibault Dominguez. "It was very calm, it came up to breathe from time to time. I followed it for 10 minutes, thinking it might strand. When it reached the dike of the Fort Carré, it went back out to sea," he added.

On Friday, Adrien Gannier, a veterinarian member of the National Stranding Network and the Cetacean Research Group, observed it off Bormes-les-Mimosas in the Var. Since then, it seems that the young whale has gotten lost in the Mediterranean and is trying to go back down to the Pacific. "It probably hasn’t eaten properly for several months. We’re afraid it will lose its strength before finding its way back," he worries.