A lone grey whale, measuring eight metres long – and 7,000 miles from its fellow Pacific grey whales on the other side of the world – was seen off Rabat, Morocco, at the start of March. But the pitiful wanderings of a lost whale in the Mediterranean or a young whale at a watery dead end in London seem like a sign of our times. Meanwhile, the grey whale is almost as far from home as it can get. Its presence is ironic, given that grey whales – once common off European shores until medieval times – were among the first large animals to be driven to extinction in the sea. The grey whales were even called devil fish, because they fought back so fiercely.

Source: The Guardian May 10, 2021 12:07 UTC