The woman who climbed on a beaked whale near Zandvoort on Tuesday was released on Thursday afternoon after questioning. This is confirmed by the police after reporting by the AD.
The woman herself reported to the police on Wednesday after a call, after which she was arrested detained. The investigation into the matter is still ongoing, police said.
The beaked whale threatened to wash ashore on Tuesday, but bathers at Zandvoort were able to turn it towards the sea. Once he was free from the sand and swam in the right direction again, the woman grabbed the animal and tried to climb onto it.
“She would never consciously hurt that animal,” the woman’s lawyer, Simone van der Aart, responds in the AD. “It is difficult to see what exactly happened, but she never wanted to stop the animal. Out of enthusiasm and bewilderment, she wanted to hug him.”
Video footage of the woman’s action is circulating on the internet. Police on Thursday called on people to stop making threats against the woman. After the woman’s arrest, the SOS Dolfijn Foundation said it hoped that “this is a lesson for everyone not to treat wild animals in this way”.
The beaked whale is a whale that lives in deep oceans. The animals are used to finding their food at a depth of 2 or 3 kilometers. So they can hardly survive in the shallow North Sea.
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