May 15, 2026, 9:28 amMay 15, 2026, 9:28 am
What’s new?
A dead whale has been discovered off the Danish island of Anholt. The animal was lying about 75 meters off the coast and had probably been dead for some time, reported the Ritzau news agency, citing the environmental authority Miljøstyrelsen.
This picture is circulating in the Danish media: It is supposed to show the stranded whale off Anholt.Image: facebook / OPSLAGSTAVLEN ANHOLT
According to the assessment of a local wildlife ranger, it is probably a humpback whale. The animal is estimated to be 10 to 15 meters long, he told broadcaster TV 2 Østjylland. There are currently no plans to recover the whale. That could change if the carcass drifts closer to the coast, they said.
Is it Timmy?
This is still unclear, but it cannot be ruled out. According to initial estimates, the animal spotted off Denmark is likely to be similar in size to Timmy. Photos should also show that the whale does not have healthy skin. This was also the case with Timmy – the long stay in the relatively salty Baltic Sea is harmful to the skin of humpback whales.
The location where the whale was found could also indicate that the stranded animal was Timmy. The whale was released in the North Sea – about 70 kilometers off Skagen, the northernmost point of Denmark. The island of Anholt, off which the dead whale lies, is around 120 kilometers from Skagen.
Are there GPS indications?
No. Even around two weeks after the release, there is still no known data on where the animal is. The private initiative to transport the whale recently said that a GPS transmitter still does not provide any signals for location. There is no more data at all.
According to the initiative, before the humpback whale was released on May 2nd, a GPS transmitter was attached to the dorsal fin to provide constant location data. Whether this actually happened could not be verified by independent sources.
Whale Timmy has been fitted with a transmitter. But this didn’t work as planned.Image: keystone
How could the whale be identified?
According to Danish media, a tissue sample will be taken from the dead animal during the day. According to the information, we are waiting for low water to allow this.
In order to determine whether the carcass found in Denmark is the whale that was previously stranded in Germany, photos could theoretically also help: According to the initiative, a photo was taken of the fluke – the animal’s large tail fin – which will be included in the relevant databases as a photo ID. However, there was no confirmation of this information from independent sources either.
Humpback whale Timmy made headlines in Germany for weeks.Image: keystone
In addition to a photo of the underside of a fluke, according to the animal protection organization WDC, conspicuous features such as a scar pattern on the skin can also be used to identify a whale. The Poeler whale belongs to the population of North Atlantic humpback whales. “Every research team that works with this population photographs the individuals,” it said. Thousands of ID photos have been collected over the years.
What had happened before?
The whale stranded off the German coast made headlines for weeks. The last chapter of the saga so far was a day-long transport by a private rescue initiative to the North Sea. How exactly this ended was unclear until the end.
The bull was first seen in the Baltic Sea at the beginning of March. In the approximately 60 days leading up to the transport, he spent around two thirds of the time in shallow water zones. He was brought to the North Sea from the island of Poel on a barge.
According to the initiative, there are no photos or videos of the release. It also remained unclear what condition the animal, weakened and injured from going back and forth in the boat, was in at the time. Experts from animal protection organizations unanimously assessed the whale’s long-term survival chances as very low.
(dab/sda/dpa)