Australia decides to put down orphaned baby whale

A baby whale which has been desperately trying to suckle from a yacht in a Sydney bay in a futile bid to find its missing mother is to be humanely destroyed, Australian wildlife officers said yesterday.

The humpback whale, nicknamed Colin by Australian media, was found at the weekend attempting to suckle from a moored yacht at Pittwater Bay after being abandoned by its mother off Australia's east coast.

"Our hearts are breaking with what's happening with baby Colin," New South Wales state premier Morris Iemma said after the military volunteered floats to try to get the calf back to sea earlier in the day.

But a report by expert vets said blood tests revealed the two-tonne calf, believed to be only two to three weeks old, was in poor condition and unlikely to live through the night. It was suffering from shark bite wounds and breathing difficulties.

A team of park rangers and marine scientists then decided to put down the animal early today, state wildlife officials said. Authorities expected to use a lethal dose of anaesthetic.

"They'll need to locate it first, and the poor little guy could have passed away in the night," State Parks and Wildlife service spokesman John Dengate told local media.

With time running out and rescue efforts becoming more desperate, an aboriginal "whale whisperer" was brought to the bay during the afternoon to "talk" to the calf. Colin had apparently responded, whisperer Bunna Lawrie recounted afterwards.

"He heard me singing and came over. I looked at him and he was full of life. He had a few scratches and cuts on him and I was a bit worried about his eyes. All he needed was mother's milk," Mr Lawrie told the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper.

He pleaded with authorities for a change of heart on killing the calf.

"There was hope that another whale could pick him up and adopt him. He could have at least learned to swim with them and eat krill and plankton," Mr Lawrie said.

Australia's military offered an empty fuel bladder as an inflatable raft to tow 5.5-metre Colin out to sea to try to unite it with a pod of passing whales.

But Peter Harrison, the director of the Southern Cross University Whale Research Centre north of Sydney, said another humpback mother was unlikely to adopt the orphan calf.

"We have occasionally heard reports where a calf appears to have lost its mother and goes searching for other whales and attaches itself to the pod, but there's no indication that they're adopted and fed," he told Reuters.