A beluga whale was spotted on Tuesday in the River Thames near London, hundreds of kilometres from its normal Arctic habitat.
Whale normally found in Arctic spotted near London | https://t.co/5YoxNgOxfu pic.twitter.com/K3F9MQiufu
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) September 25, 2018
Video footage showed the white mammal surfacing in the Thames near Coalhouse Fort in Essex.
"This is the most southerly sighting of a beluga we have ever seen around these shores," Lucy Babey, head of science and conservation at the ORCA charity, was quoted as saying by The Mirror newspaper.
The last sighting in UK waters was in 2015 when they were spotted off northeastern England near the Northumberland coastline, but they left shortly afterwards, she added.
In 2006, a northern bottle-nosed whale died after stranding itself in the Thames.
