Beluga fever is tinged with sorrow for whale-watchers on Thames

The thrill of a once-in-a-lifetime sighting mingles with a fear that this story may not end well

Caroline Davies

Fri 28 Sep 2018 16.37 BSTLast modified on Fri 28 Sep 2018 17.30 BST

Grant Hazlehurst, a civil servant from Bromley, Kent has seen many whales. “Fin, sperm, Cuvier’s beaked, True’s beaked, sei, long-fin pilot …” most of them from his regular jaunts on a car ferry in the Bay of Biscay. “But I never thought I would see a beluga, not in the Thames,” he said. “So, I’m hoping.”

So were the two dozen or so others who, on Friday morning, gathered on a windy shore near Gravesend, scanning foam-flecked waves in anticipation that, for a fourth day, the beluga whale that has somehow got lost in the Thames, would show itself.

Two hours in and Bill, who had travelled from Somerset, had only managed to tick off a sparrowhawk. He had heard about the beluga on a birding app. “But I didn’t believe it. I was waiting for it to come up: ‘Correction. Albino porpoise,’” he said. Now he was here, and – ping – his alert went off: “Whale spotted, just west of the Ship and Lobster pub.” It was a couple of kilometres away. He was off at a trot. “I’m a happy man,” he said later, after managing to see it.

Peter Cartwright, was one of the first to spot it on Friday. “First you see this big melon head coming up, and then it rolls over. It’s just like a big white tyre,” said the counsellor from south-east London. He and his brother had, cunningly, split up and gone in different directions to maximise their chances. Was it exciting? “Absolutely. It’s a beluga,” he said.

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