Moby Dick (Rhine)

Moby Dick was a beluga or white whale, along the Lower Rhine and then throughout Germany and the Netherlands in 1966 attracted much attention. He was named after the novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville.

On May 18, 1966 some of Rhine boatmen reported in Duisburg the water police a white whale in the Rhine. This responded - and made at the skippers first test for blood alcohol. This however was negative - it really swam a white whale in the River Rhine and 300 km from the sea, and thousands of miles away from the usual habitat of beluga whales, arctic waters.

It turned out that the whale was originally to be placed in an English zoo. However, the transport ship capsized almost in a hurricane, so that the whale was washed into the North Sea just before reaching the English coast. From there he came through the port of Rotterdam in the Rhine.

Wolfgang violence, the director of the Duisburg Zoo, the unusual guest in the Rhine tried to control with nets and tranquilizer darts. Activists trying to disrupt the hunt by throwing of an airship from oranges into the Rhine. Massive popular protests and official protests from the Netherlands eventually led to the Einfangversuche had to be stopped.

First, the fast " Moby Dick" called Wal turned again towards the sea, but stopped before the open for him lock Kornwerderzand the sea and swam back upriver. Accompanied by numerous spectators, he swam to Bonn, where his appearance blew up a federal press conference. Only then he turned around again and was already three days later, as seen on June 16 at 18.42 clock for the last time upon reaching the open sea at Hoek van Holland.

It is often rumored that the appearance of Moby Dick in the Rhine the actual beginning of the environmental movement had been in Germany. In fact, starting around 1966, the first effective environmental protection laws in Germany were adopted; the Rhine, for example, swam through the "Moby Dick", was then well founded as " cloaca " means; Sewage from cities and chemical plants were mostly initiated unfiltered into him.

In Bonn, the Rhine Moby Dick in 1976 was named after the Whale.