Whale Swims through Downtown London

By Erika Pennington

LONDON (AP)—It's a whale of a tale—a bottle-nosed whale swimming up the River Thames past Big Ben and Parliament as rows of worried spectators looked on Friday.The northern bottle-nosed whale was spotted in the afternoon—the first sighting in the river since 1913—as it flailed around the murky waters of the Thames, stirring up patches of what looked like blood as seagulls hovered above and rescue boats stood on the ready.Witnesses reported seeing a second whale in another part of the river Friday, and marine experts spotted two disoriented whales in northeastern Scotland last week, suggesting there was something causing the bottle-nosed whales to become disoriented."It is a race against time to save the animal,'' said Alison Shaw, marine and freshwater conservation program manager at the Zoological Society of London.

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