Dead whale towed ashore in Denmark ahead of autopsy

The carcass of a dead humpback whale whose attempted rescue captivated many across Germany has been pulled ashore.

Timelapsed footage published by German news site News5 on Saturday showed the whale being towed slowly onto a beach on the Danish island of Anholt by an industrial winch. Denmark's environment agency intends to conduct a post-mortem examination on Thursday.

Several attempts were made to get the whale - nicknamed "Timmy" and "Hope" - back into the North Sea, after it got stuck in the Baltic Sea in March.

However, the aquatic mammal was already considered ailing and close to death when a final, last-ditch attempt was made earlier in May.

The whale, originally about 12-15m (40-50ft) in length, has gained in size because of a build-up of gas as the carcass decomposes, and there is concern it could explode - as washed-up whale carcasses have been known to do.

Morten Abildstrøm, a Danish Environmental Agency official on the island of Anholt, told daily newspaper Jyllands Posten that the whale would be cut into pieces after veterinarians and researchers had travelled there to take samples.

Those pieces will then be taken elsewhere to be destroyed, he said.

The whale was discovered off Anholt's shoreline earlier in May, two weeks after a private mission to save the humpback from being stranded on Germany's Baltic Sea coast ended in failure.

German authorities had given the go-ahead for that attempt despite viewing it as a long shot, as the whale was already severely weakened from its ordeal, having acquired damage to its skin from the lower salt content of the Baltic Sea.

The mission used inflatable cushions to pull it to the surface before dragging it back to the North Sea on a floating platform.

Exactly how the whale ended up on an island off Denmark's East Jutland coast remains unclear. The barge that carried the mammal away from Germany released it into the sea about 70km (45 miles) from the northern tip of Denmark.

The urgency in disposing of the body was because the whale was now sitting on a popular beach, according to Abildstrøm.

Officials previously attempted to move the carcass from the beach to the port of Grenaa on the Danish mainland, but this proved unsuccessful due to poor weather conditions.

The saga has transfixed Germans since it began, and has left islanders on Anholt bemused by the continued interest.

"Timmy" first became stranded in Lübeck Bay, on Germany's northern coastline, after apparently becoming entangled in netting.

It was initially freed from a sandbank by German environmental workers, who dug a channel so it could swim away.

But it swam further east and ended up off the island of Poel, where it became stuck in shallow waters.