Australia to put down orphan whale calf (Reuters)

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An baby whale which has been desperately trying to suckle from a yacht in a Sydney bay in a futile bid to find its missing mother is to be humanely destroyed, Australian wildlife officers said on Thursday.

The humpback whale, nicknamed "Colin" by Australian media, was found at the weekend attempting to suckle from a moored yacht at Pittwater Bay after being abandoned by its mother off Australia's east coast.

"Our hearts are breaking with what's happening with baby Colin," New South Wales state premier Morris Iemma said after the military volunteered floats to try to get the calf back to sea earlier in the day.

But a report by expert vets said blood tests revealed the two-tonne calf, believed to be only two to three weeks old, was in poor condition and unlikely to live through the night. It was suffering from shark bite wounds and breathing difficulties.

A team of park rangers and marine scientists had then decided to put down the animal after dark on Thursday, state wildlife officials said. Authorities expected to use a lethal dose of anaesthetic.

"There has been a deterioration in the whale's condition over the last couple of hours. We've decided it is in the best interests of the whale that it is put down," a Parks and Wildlife spokesman told journalists.

With time running out and rescue efforts becoming more desperate, an Aboriginal "whale whisperer" was brought to the bay during the afternoon to "talk" to the calf, Australian television reported. Colin had apparently responded, the report said.

Australia's military offered an empty fuel bladder as an inflatable raft to tow 5.5-metre (18-ft) Colin out to sea to try to unite it with a pod of passing whales.

But Peter Harrison, the director of the Southern Cross University Whale Research Centre north of Sydney, said another humpback mother was unlikely to adopt the orphan calf.

"We have occasionally heard reports where a calf appears to have lost its mother and goes searching for other whales and attaches itself to the pod, but there's no indication that they're adopted and fed," he told Reuters.

The whale's struggle to survive has captivated Australians, who strongly oppose Japanese "scientific" whale killing and flock to whale-watching tours during the giant mammals' annual migration to the Antarctic and return to breed in warmer Australian waters.

On Monday a team of workers towed the private yacht out to sea to try to lure the calf into deeper water, hoping that it would find its mother or another passing whale pod, but it was spotted close to the beach at Pittwater again on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Rob Taylor; editing by Roger Crabb)

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