GREENPEACE activists hauled the cadaver of an endangered finback whale out of the Baltic yesterday, transported it to Berlin and laid it at the door of the Japanese Embassy.

The salvage of the 17-metre long, 20-tonne whale came as the environmental pressure group plays cat and mouse with the Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean, blocking harpoons with human shields. “We want to use this whale washed up in Germany to show the Japanese that they do not need to slaughter whales to carry out scientific research — you can rely on strandings,” Willie Mackenzie, of Greenpeace, said .

The use of the dead whale for political purposes clearly upset the marine biology community, for whom contact with a fin whale is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Only six fin whales have been beached on the Baltic coast in the past 100 years. “If we had known it was going to be transported to Berlin we would not have approved,” said Harald Behnke, director of the Maritime Museum in Stralsund, just along the coast from Wismar, where the whale was stranded.

Marine biologists believe that the whale starved to death after swimming from the Atlantic in a forlorn search for herring. They want to establish whether it really was in search of herring and if so what attracted it to the Baltic. The herring schools usually arrive in spring or early summer, when the Baltic is less frozen. Scientists are puzzled by the whale’s behaviour: it seems to have strayed into shallow waters and become confused. So far all that can be said about it is that it is between 10 and 20 years old.

Greenpeace emphasises that it helped to tug the huge animal out of the water in the interests of science as well as politics. It was no easy task; the whale slipped loose from slings binding it to the crane and splashed back into the water.

After the whale was used as a focus for a demonstration in front of the Japanese Embassy on Hiroshima Street in Berlin last night, it was taken under police escort to the city’s maritime research centre for safekeeping and a post-mortem examination.

For the duration of the trip from the coast, it was wrapped in a wet sheet and monitored by a biologist.

THE FINBACK

• Second largest animals on earth, after blue whales: can grow to more than 26 metres
• Weigh about 2 tonnes at birth; adults weigh up to 80 tonnes and live for up to 100 years
• Produce low-frequency pulses that can be heard by other fin whales over 500 miles away
• They are fast swimmers and can dive to 230m (755ft). They live in pods of three to seven
• They can eat up to 2 tons (1,814 kg) of food a day
• Most whales have just one calf at a time