Whale Sanctuary Project’s Whale Aid Team Assisting in Humpback Rescue

Update April 28th: The rescue team (with Jeff Foster in the water) guides Timmy onto the barge. Video courtesy of Bild.

Jeff Foster, the Whale Sanctuary Project’s Animal Transfer & Rehab Coordinator, with Mike Partica and Kyra Wadsworth, have joined other experts, veterinarians and numerous volunteers in Insel Poel, Germany in the effort to free the humpback whale Timmy, whom local citizens named after nearby Timmendorfer Strand and who is stranded in the Kirchsee, a shallow inlet connected to Wismar Bay, off Poel Island.

The Whale Sanctuary Project’s Whale Aid program provides a global outreach to organizations that need assistance, on behalf of whales in need of rescue or rehabilitation.

The Whale Aid Team was initially contacted for advice on how the stranded humpback could be refloated from sand bars on which he was stranded, and was invited by organizers of the rescue effort to join the effort to help Timmy. The team arrived on-site on April 23rd.

“It is very gratifying when the team that is working diligently to establish the whale sanctuary in Nova Scotia can apply their expertise and experience to help wild whales in need,” Charles Vinick, CEO of the Whale Sanctuary Project, said. “Team members like Jeff, Mike and Kyra have tremendous skills and we have to do all we can to help when the need arises.”

Jeff has extensive experience with whales and dolphins. He managed day-to-day whale training and care during the Keiko Project, which returned the captive whale of “Free Willy” fame back to the ocean from where he had been captured decades earlier off the coast of Iceland.

In 2002, he also oversaw the rehab of Springer, a young orca who had become separated from her family off the coast of Vancouver and was found, emaciated, in Puget Sound, off the coast of Seattle. Once she was back to good health, Springer was returned to her home waters in the Johnstone Strait and was later seen again swimming with her family. Since then, she has given birth to two calves.

In 2010, Jeff was responsible for the Born Free Foundation’s Tom and Misha Project, in which he and Mike were instrumental in the reintroduction of Tom and Misha, the first bottlenose dolphins successfully released back into the wild. The two wild-born dolphins were being kept in a dirty swimming pool in Hisaronu, Turkey. Jeff and Mike and the team on site worked with Tom and Misha for two years before successfully returning them to the waters of the Mediterranean.

2018: Jeff Foster prepares to take a breath sample from J-50/Scarlet (Photo: Katy Foster)

In 2018, Jeff and his wife Katy coordinated much of the field work when the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) invited the Whale Sanctuary Project, along with several other organizations, to help Scarlet, a young orca who was part of the endangered Southern Resident population in the Salish Sea. Scarlet was emaciated and starving, and sadly, despite efforts to feed her and treat her, she did not survive.

A year later, in 2019, Jeff contributed his expertise to Whale Aid Russia, the biggest whale rescue in history, when, following tremendous pressure from Russian activists, the Russian government invited the Whale Sanctuary Project’s CEO Charles Vinick to bring a small team to Russia to work with the government to return to the ocean 10 orcas and 87 beluga whales who had been captured illegally for sale to marine entertainment parks in China.

As we post this, Jeff, Mike and Kyra are still working with the team in Germany to do everything they can to free the stranded whale Timmy.