ANHOLT — Danish authorities confirmed on Saturday that a humpback whale calf known as Timmy, previously stranded off the German coast, was found dead near the island of Anholt in the Kattegat strait on Friday. The Danish Environmental Protection Agency verified the identification after a Nature Agency employee retrieved a tracking device fastened to the whale's back.

"It can now be confirmed that the stranded humpback whale near Anholt is the same whale that was previously stranded in Germany and was the subject of rescue attempts," said Jane Hansen, division head at the Danish Environmental Protection Agency. The device's position and appearance matched records of the animal previously observed in German waters.

The 10-metre-long calf was found about 70 kilometres south of the location where it had been released into the North Sea on 2 May, two weeks after that release. Hansen said there were "No concrete plans to remove the whale from the area or to perform a necropsy, and it is not currently considered to pose a problem in the area." She urged people to stay away from the carcass due to the possibility it may carry diseases.

Timmy was first spotted stranded on Timmendorfer beach in shallow waters off the German coast nearly two months before its death. German officials ceased rescue efforts, saying they believed the whale could not be freed. Two millionaires in Germany said they were prepared to pay whatever it costs to release the animal. The rescue operation, believed to have cost about €1.5m (£1.3m), involved floating the whale into a water-filled barge pulled by a tugboat from Wismar Bay near Lübeck toward deeper waters off Denmark.

Experts from the Oceanographic Museum in Stralsund had recommended the whale be left to die in peace, describing it as lethargic, weak and covered in blister-like blemishes after weeks in low-salinity water. Parts of its mouth were believed to have been caught in a fishing net. "Trying to save Timmy the whale amounted to pure animal cruelty," said Burkard Baschek, director of the Oceanographic Museum in Stralsund.

The International Whaling Commission also criticized the rescue attempt as inadvisable, stating the male juvenile appeared severely compromised and unlikely to survive. A tracking device intended to monitor the whale's progress after release was not working.

"It's really striking that there's been such a focus on this individual animal at such great cost during a time of great crisis for wildlife funding around the world," said Amy Dickham, professor of wildlife conservation at the University of Oxford. Dickham added: "It is really questionable whether it was a good use of funds, particularly compared with issues that impact much greater numbers of whales, such as collisions with vessels and entanglements with fishing gear."