Moby Dick (Rhine)

Shortly before landing, a storm in the English channel threw the container with Moby overboard who disappeared, before reappearing months later far up the Rhine river.

[1] At first Moby Dick turned oceanward again, but stopped in front of a lock to the ocean opened specially for him, and swam up the Rhine again, as far as Bonn.

[1] Observers noted that the normally white whale's skin appeared bumpy with dark splotches, apparently altered by the polluted waters of the Rhine river.

[3] The Rhine was justifiably characterized as a sewer, since waste water from cities and chemical plants was for the most part poured in unfiltered.

There is a suggestion that the appearance of Moby Dick in the Rhine and the effect the polluted water seemed to visibly have on the whale was the beginning of the environmental movement in Germany.