Concerns grow for Arctic beluga whale in Thames estuary

Concerns were growing Wednesday for a beluga whale spotted in the River Thames estuary outside London, thousands of kilometres (miles) from the cherished white species' natural home in Arctic waters.

The extremely rare sighting triggered wonder and excitement when the whale was first seen on Tuesday, but after it was spotted again on Wednesday in exactly the same location, concerns grew that the beluga had got lost and was potentially in danger.

Rob Lott, a marine mammal scientist at the Whale and Dolphin Conservation wildlife charity, said the cetacean was being monitored in case it strands on a sandbank.

"The longer it stays in the Thames estuary then it will become more of a concern," he told BBC radio.

"Hopefully instinct will soon kick in and the beluga will leave the estuary and go out into the North Sea and then head north where it should be," the scientist explained.

The sight of a beluga whale so far south -- 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometres) from even Iceland -- is exceptional.

"Beluga whales are a species of the icy Arctic -- finding one in the tepid Thames is an astonishingly rare event," said Rod Downie, polar chief adviser at WWF, the World Wide Fund for Nature.

The last reported sighting of a beluga in UK waters was in 2015, when two were spotted off the northeast coast of England and one in Northern Ireland.

Rescue teams are on standby in case the whale gets into danger.

"It's very unusual and it's not a very good place," Julia Cable, spokeswoman for British Divers Marine Life Rescue, which saves marine animals in distress, told AFP.

"We wouldn't go anywhere near it in a boat. We could just do more harm than good."