Last Sunday,an awe-inspiring affair took place on Hayling Island. an 8 m long Northern Bottlenose whale beached on some mudflats just north of Hayling in the neighbouring Langstone Harbour, Hampshire.

Upsettingly, the Northern Bottlenose whale had gone through severe dehydration, which caused it to be suffering from kidney failure, when it became entrapped on Saturday night.

There was a large saving system, where humans tried valiently to salvage the Northern Bottlenose’s life. There was a time when the team thought that the kind thing to do would be to put the expansive creature to sleep with a lethal injection. But, the whale then swam out to sea yet again. Regrettably, it came back towards the harbour again and was then beached for a second and terminative time.

The vets adjudicated that the only nurturant thing to do would be to issue the lethal injection, which they did on Friday morning. They used Immobilon, which was a very rapid and lethal strength of anaesthetic.

If the mammal wasn’t put to sleep, the experts believe that it would have taken about two further days for the creature to die, during which it would have stayed sick and distressed.

It seemed bizarre that the six tonne mammal, which is ordinarily found about 3000 miles away, ended up here on Hayling Island, but it is another wonderful story that Hampshire’s Hayling Island brings to its history.

There were around a dozen firefighters, police, coastguard personnel as well as members of the Hayling Island harvour lifeboat staff involved in the attempt.