Rescue crews raced against the clock to save a beached whale in Queens Wednesday.
A resident reported the stranded sea mammal just before 9 a.m., a security staffer for the Breezy Cooperative told The Post.
The 60-foot-long mammal, believed to be a finn whale, finally floated off tonight when the tide rose. The whale was last seen spouting in Jamaica Bay. But its prognosis isn’t good.
“The whale’s been sick for a long period of time,” said Kimberly Durham, of the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research.
After the whale beached itself, Point Breeze firefighters used a water pump to keep the mammal alive.
“I haven’t seen a whale like this in Breezy since I was a kid,” said Joan Washington, who has been a resident of Breezy Point for the past thirty years.
“We started seeing wildlife like this again last summer. We see dolphins and sharks on the ocean side but not in the bay.”
Louis Bassolino, 66, walks the beach every few days looking for his boat that was lost in Hurricane Sandy. He said he was driving to the beach around 8 a.m. when he spotted what he thought was his boat.
“I saw just the top of it. It looked like a capsized upside-down boat. I thought maybe it’s my boat,” said Bassolino. “Then I saw the tail jump up out of the water, and the spout of water. I realized it was a whale.”
Bassolino said the fire department didn’t believe him when he called.
“I got in there twice. There was so much tragedy and disaster this year, we just wanted something to live and survive. Just to have life,” Bassolino’s wife Diane, said, as she began to tear up. “She just looked so helpless. Once the tide went out, she started collapsing on her own body, you could see it.”
Ed Manley, a volunteer from Florida helping with Hurricane Sandy cleanup efforts, was one of the first people to get to the beach, he said.
“We got a call this morning from the police department, they said come down and help out,” said Manley, who has been volunteering in Breezy Point for the past 77 days.
Manley worked nonstop for three hours in the cold, throwing buckets of water on the whale to help it survive.
“They couldn’t get the pump going so I was using a bucket to keep her nice and wet.”