On April 26, 2026, at 15:40 local time, the stranded humpback whale Timmy remained grounded on a sandbank off Poel Island in the Baltic Sea, marking the 27th day of a rescue effort that has split experts and reignited debate over who should lead the operation.
The situation intensified when Dr. Jenna Wallace, a Hawaiian marine veterinarian brought in by private backers including Mediamarkt heir Walter Gunz, publicly withdrew from the mission on April 20. In a Facebook post, she criticized the effort as being driven by politics and YouTube spectacle rather than science, accusing unnamed private rescuers of appointing a self-styled “whale whisperer” to oversee the operation. Wallace said she no longer believed she was the right veterinarian for the case, adding that repeated interventions had only worsened Timmy’s odds.
Despite her exit, Wallace affirmed her belief that the whale still has a chance — if professional help arrives. She revealed she has contacted Robert Marc Lehmann, the influencer and marine biologist who participated in the first rescue attempt, and urged him to return. “I wish with all my heart that Robert Lehmann would reach back — and yes, I have tried to get him back,” she wrote, calling him “a wonderful man.”
Lehmann’s initial involvement ended in frustration after he tried to free Timmy from fishing gear in its mouth near Timmendorfer Strand. Though the whale initially swam off, it headed in the wrong direction. Lehmann had sought to coordinate the escort boats to redirect it toward the North Sea, but the water police denied him authority, prompting his departure. Subsequent criticism came from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern’s environment minister Till Backhaus and Timmendorfer Strand’s mayor Sven Partheil-Böhnke, who publicly questioned his judgment — a dispute Lehmann later documented in his own YouTube video.
Meanwhile, developments on Poel suggest a shift in Timmy’s condition. On April 26, Minister Backhaus told BILD that the whale had rotated 90 degrees in the tidal mud and now lies aligned with the navigational channel, a positioning he described as promising. “We’re glad the whale stayed in the depression. It’s interesting: it turned 90 degrees — and in the right direction. It seems to be preparing itself, mentally and morally, for departure,” he said, calling it the calm before the liberation strike.
The rescue team “Free Willy” returned to the site that afternoon to perform further checks. They attempted to insert an endoscope into Timmy’s mouth to assess for injuries or foreign objects but were unsuccessful. However, gentle manipulation of the jaw corners prompted the whale to open its mouth twice, about 15 centimeters each time, with no visible net remnants detected. A concentrated glucose and saline solution was administered via a green watering can directly into the mouth, while workers continued widening the channel to prepare for the whale’s eventual loading onto a steel barge.
Concerns are growing over the impact of the prolonged operation. Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC) warned that human presence causes unavoidable stress to wild marine mammals, a view echoed by the German Maritime Museum, which stressed that every close approach exerts significant pressure on the animal. Despite this, Backhaus maintained that Timmy remains transportable and is not at immediate risk of death, noting visible weight loss but insisting, “He won’t die from one day to the next.”
The actual transport using a barge is not expected to start before Tuesday. The steel hull is en route to Wismar overnight, with plans to load Timmy into a contained, aquarium-like structure and haul him over 400 kilometers to the North Sea. As of late afternoon, the whale’s skin was still being tended to, and rescuers reported he appeared ready for departure.
Why did Dr. Jenna Wallace leave the rescue effort?
Wallace said she stepped away because she felt the operation had become driven by politics and YouTube fame rather than veterinary science, and that she was no longer the right professional to intervene given the diminished chances of survival.
Is Robert Marc Lehmann likely to return to assist with Timmy’s rescue?
Wallace said she has spoken with Lehmann and hopes he will come back, but there is no confirmation from Lehmann himself or official rescuers that he plans to rejoin the operation at this time.
