Rescue of Timmy the whale ‘an all-round catastrophe’ after tracker failure

The humpback whale being transported towards the North Sea in a flooded cargo ship. The German Oceanographic Museum said it believed the whale was ‘highly likely’ dead. Photograph: Philip Dulian/AP

Marine biologists and whale experts have stepped up their criticism of a privately funded operation to release a humpback whale that was stranded for weeks off Germany’s Baltic coast after it emerged that a tracker fitted to the whale was not working.

The whereabouts and health of the young male whale – nicknamed Timmy after one of the sandbanks it was stranded on – remain unknown three days after it was transported in a water-holding barge pulled by a tugboat to waters off the coast of Denmark.