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Another whale may be in trouble in shallow waters off the British coast, rescuers have said.
Coastguard teams have stood down after no further sightings of a possible whale in trouble off the UK’s east coast.
The latest report comes after a bull died at Hunstanton, Norfolk, on Thursday. This was the 30th sperm whale death in the North Sea this year.
A member of the Mundesley coastguard rescue team reported a potential sighting at 10.15am of a whale around 400 yards off the coast of the Norfolk village.
British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) said on Tuesday that it was investigating the latest sighting off north Norfolk.
But an ensuing search by the Mundesley and Happisburgh coastguard has found no further sign of the cetacean, and the tide is now heading back out.
A spokeswoman said the sighting had been referred to them but there were no further details on precise location or species.
Six sperm whales have washed up and died on UK beaches recently, with the most recent stranded at Hunstanton around 50 miles up the coast from Mundesley. Experts believe the animals entered the North Sea by mistake, in search of food.
Last week’s whale death followed the discovery of four dead whales washed up on the Lincolnshire coast and another at Hunstanton last month.
In total, 30 sperm whales have beached and died across the sea, which at 20-3om deep is so shallow it can disorientate the deep-diving species.
Others have been found in France, the Netherlands and Germany.
“We’ve stood down two teams. There’s no sighting of the whale any more, we’ve lost sight of it completely. The tide is heading out,” said a spokeswoman for the UK coastguard.
The Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme, which examines all whale, dolphin and porpoise strandings in the UK, is working to establish why the whales came ashore and how they died.
The coastguard had earlier reported the possible whale as “alive and thrashing” in the water, but was now awaiting any further reports by its staff or members of the public.
This could help establish what the whales, thought to have come from the same bachelor pod normally living off the west coast of Norway, were doing in the North Sea.
Gavin Marsh, of the British Divers Marine Life Rescue, said it was hard to accurately identify whales at sea: “We don’t know if it was a sperm whale or not. To be honest, we don’t know if it was [not a whale but] a dolphin or even a sandbank.”
One theory is that the male whales could have taken a wrong turn while heading south to find females or been lured by food.
On average there are around seven sperm whale strandings on the UK coast each year.
Stephen Marsh, operations manager at the BDMLR, said: “At the moment the report from the coastguard is that the whale is still free-swimming.
“Because we’re come up to spring tide, the waters may be a bit deeper but that can be a double-edged sword because you get very high high tides and very low low tides.
“If it does strand the story will be very similar to what we’ve had recently - the whale will have very little chance of relaunching and, if it does, its chances of survival will be very low.”
A member of the Mundesley Coastguard Rescue Team contacted the UK Coastguard just after 10am this morning to report the whale was 300 to 400 yards off shore.
A spokesman said: “The whale, which is the seventh whale in that area, was reported to be alive and thrashing about in the shallow water.”
Mike Puplett, of the UK Coastguard, said: “We are advising people to keep at a safe distance from the whale, so we do not cause any further distress to it.
“We are doing all we can to assist the authorities and allow those with rescue experience to do their work.”
The Maritime and Coastguard Agency said later that the operation was being stood down as there had been no sightings of the whale for 90 minutes.
