Poor Baby Whale...

Here's a sad little story about a baby Humpback Whale that beached itself. Humpback Whales are on the endangered Species List, in addition, they are listed as Vulnerable [to becoming extinct], with approximately 15,000-10,000 individuals in the wild. I find it surprising that they did not attempt to put this humpback whale in captivity though, just because humans like to do that. Most of me feeling like they did the right thing, but I can't help to feel like fighting for its life is almost better. I agree with the reasons they chose to euthanize the baby whale: 1.) Needs to feed off its mother 2.) Needs mother's protection 3.) without 1 and 2 the baby ultimate dies from starvation or from a shark attack. So what they did was a good death considering the other options. But I still can't help to feel like why not try to put it back to sea?! But they may have only saved its life for a day, who knows about tomorrow if the calf could have survived on it own, but the chances were very much against him. But they did everything to attempt to find the mother, there's only so much humans can do. But still, if the baby was put in captivity it would not have had a healthy, happy, long lived life. There's no question that this animal would become too large to fit in any aquarium and it would definitely be hard to keep feeding this whale thousands of pounds of krill a day once it stopped feeding off approximately 100 lbs of milk supplement a day. The baby whale would have no companionship, which these creatures thrive off of through their vocalizations that travel long distances underwater. It would also not have any close physical contact like it would normally in its pod in the wild. Who would really want to take in this animal knowing all that?! Knowing this whale would never truly be happy in captivity. I wouldn't. But it's sad that the baby whale had to die, but most likely it would have had a worse death in the wild, either starving to death or being eaten by a shark!