Demut und Fleiß

A 5.5-metre long minke whale that swam 1600 kilometres up the Amazon has been trapped for a second time on a sandbar, Brazilian news media reported.

Local residents spotted the whale just a few kilometres from where it was freed on Friday near Santarem, a city in the Amazon rain forest, the Jornal do Brasil reported.

Brazil's Environmental Protection Agency had called off its search for the whale late Friday after losing track of the mammal at the Tapajos River. Calls to agency officials were not answered.

The whale ran aground for the first time on Wednesday. The Globo television network broadcast images of dozens of people gathered along the Tapajos River splashing water on the animal, whose back and dorsal fin were out of water and exposed to the hot Amazon sun.

The minke whale is the second smallest of the baleen whales after the pygmy right whale.

The International Whaling Commission Scientific Committee estimates there are about 184,000 minke whales in the central and northeast Atlantic Ocean.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/whale-stranded-in-brazilian-amazon--again/2007/11/19/1195321638295.html