The killer whale whose deteriorating health in the fresh waters of the River Seine led officials in Normandy to deploy a drone in their efforts to lure it back to sea has been euthanized after it was determined the creature’s state had declined too greatly to survive.

On Friday the prefecture of Normandy’s Seine Maritime department announced a drone would be used as a “gentle method of intervention” to monitor and attempt to coax the killer whale back to the west, toward the Atlantic port of le Havre where it was first spotted May 16. 

Though that aerial option to the more intrusive suggestion that boats be used to herd the mammal back upstream won out, the operation launched Saturday ultimately involved a hybrid approach: the flight of drones to monitor and broadcast calls of other killer whales to entice the distressed orca in the right direction, and small ships similarly diffusing those songs underwater to tempt the creature towards the…

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Source: dronedj.com