The Whale That Swam To London

Planetary Visions provided animations for the Channel 4 documentary, the "Whale That Swam To London".

On Friday 20th January 2006, concerned Londoners started calling the emergency services to report sightings of a whale in the River Thames. The whale was a female Northern Bottlenose whale which had become lost, as its normal habitat would have been around the coasts of the far north of Scotland, and in the Arctic Ocean.

This was the first time this species of whale had been seen in the Thames since records began in 1913. Due to concern about the safety of the whale, which was already showing signs of distress, a rescue effort was mounted by the British Divers Marine Life Rescue and the Metropolitan Police.

Unfortunately the whale died after suffering from convulsions as it was being rescued, but by this time interest in the whale had become international. After a post-mortem, which showed the whale had died from dehydration and failed kidneys, the skeleton was displayed in the Natural History Museum, London, with other parts of the body going for scientific research to the Canaries.