Story from news.com.au:
Heartbreaking! I feel hopeless. It's a real tough situation...
"THE Defence Force has agreed to supply a fuel bladder on which Colin the abandoned baby whale could be towed to sea, the Daily Telegraph has reported.
Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon said he had agreed to a request from New South Wales Environment Minister Nathan Rees to supply the fuel cell to be used like a giant inflatable raft to tow the whale calf out to sea in the hope a pod of humpbacks will go past.
However, National Parks and Wildlife spokesman John Dengate said the baby whale, in Sydney's Pittwater, would have been in communication with pods going up the coast because they could communicate across kilometres.
He said whales never had twins so finding a mother who already had a calf to adopt Colin was almost out of the question.
“The whale itself is in a satisfactory condition,” Mr Dengate said this morning.
“It is swimming well, it’s breathing OK and it is stable in the water so there is no need for any urgent action.”
National Parks and Wildlife Service officers are awaiting the arrival of leading whale vet David Bligh from Seaworld today.
The distressed calf has been nuzzling boats in Pittwater in a futile search for its mother since the weekend.
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Pictures: Colin the stranded baby humpback whale
Mal Holland: The Colin dilemma is a natural reaction
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Delivering the grim news that today was "decision-day" for Colin, Mr Rees said the Defence Force plan may by the last hope before experts euthanased the whale calf.
The plan will be put to a panel of experts today who will decide whether to end Colin's suffering if it fails.
Following Dr BLigh's assessment, there will be crisis talks between NPWS, RSPCA, ORCCA, SeaWorld and Taronga experts to make a decision on the next step.
The exercise to move Colin with this equipment would also need to be subjected to a sign-off from the vets and other experts.
"I am advised tomorrow is decision day," Mr Rees said.
"Colin's physical health is deteriorating. We will have to be guided by the experts as to whether his health is up to a further attempt at getting him out to open water and, if not, what the best option is."
Experts have warned that saving Colin by hand-rearing him could cost more than $2 million and may not even work.
Experts have advised the Department of Environment and Conservation in Sydney that a 10 gigalitre pool, the size of four Olympic pools would be required to house the animal to hand-rear it until it was 11 months old.
Mr Dengate said the advice of experts was that it was not physically possible to look after a whale like this.
"It's looking like it's too big a mountain to climb," he said. "We're racking our brains ... But we need to be realistic about this."
The challenges involved with raising the mammal in captivity were immense.
"To look after this little whale, you need to suckle it for 11 months, that's never been done anywhere in the word before for a whale this size or for that long," he said on Channel 9.
"You then need to get it to the Antarctic where its food supply is. Letting it go off Sydney, it's got a 2000km trip to make. It doesn't know how to avoid killer whales or how to find krill.
"There's a whole range of extremely serious problems with the idea of getting this little whale through to getting it released in the wild ... that's the advice we're getting from every single expert that we've spoken to," he said."
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