Hopes fade for lost baby whale in Australia

A desperate baby whale abandoned by its mother was still trying to suckle from yachts in an Australian harbour Wednesday as last ditch efforts were being made to save it from death. Sailor Peter Lewis said he was woken shortly before dawn at his mooring in the vast and scenic Pittwater bay near Sydney's Palm Beach by "strange sounds on the outside of the hull of the boat.""It sounded like a bit of a vacuum cleaner on the bottom of the boat. I finally got up and here's this whale suckling the side of the boat," he told commercial radio. "It was a very, very sad sight."The calf tried to suckle for about an hour, then "it just seemed to give a sigh out at one stage as if, you know, this isn't working," Lewis said.The whale calf is believed to have only days to live and mercy killing might be the only way to end its suffering, experts say.But with public concern over the calf's fate growing, a scientist suggested it could be fed formula milk for human babies through an artificial teat until a plan had been devised to take it back to sea.A spokeswoman for the wildlife organisation IFAW told AFP, however, that the calf would need up to 230 litres of milk a day, and experts close to the rescue efforts said it was not an option.Wildlife rangers on Monday successfully used a yacht which the calf appeared to believe was its mother to lure it out to sea in the hope it would link up with other humpbacks passing by on their annual breeding migration.But, although pods of whales were seen in the area, the calf failed to find its own mother or a surrogate and returned to the yacht moorings in the bay."The whale is clearly getting weaker because it probably hasn't had food for about five days," Department of National Parks and Wildlife spokesman Chris McIntosh told AFP after a veterinary assessment Wednesday.Euthanasia was "the most likely outcome, but we are not at that point yet," he said.A further assessment of the whale would be made on Thursday and a decision would then be made on what would be best for the whale.Unless there was some "magical event" such as the calf communicating with and being picked up by a passing pod "there aren't many options other than euthanasia," he said.It would be difficult to lure the calf out to sea again now that it had lost its strong attachment to a particular boat, and attempts to herd it would cause unacceptable stress, he said.The humpbacks are on the return leg of a remarkable annual round trip from the Antarctic to tropical waters to breed, and they can be seen ploughing homewards not far off Sydney's beaches on most days.