Beluga fever is tinged with sorrow for whale-watchers on Thames

The thrill of a once-in-a-lifetime sighting mingles with a fear that this story may not end wellGrant Hazlehurst, a civil servant from Bromley, Kent has seen many whales. "Fin, sperm, Cuvier's beaked, True's beaked, sei, long-fin pilot ..." most of them from his regular jaunts on a car ferry in the Bay of Biscay. "But I never thought I would see a beluga, not in the Thames," he said. "So, I'm hoping."So were the two dozen or so others who, on Friday morning, gathered on a windy shore near Gravesend, scanning foam-flecked waves in anticipation that, for a fourth day, the beluga whale that has somehow got lost in the Thames, would show itself. Continue reading...