By Cara Sulieman
SHOCKED onlookers called out the coastguard when they saw a crowd of yobs beating what looked like a whale that had been washed up on to the beach.
Worried that the six savages were going to kill the animal, people in East Lothian dialled 999 to get help for the beast.
But when the coastguard arrived they soon realised it was a false alarm.
Instead of a stranded whale, the group had surrounded a wave generator that they were experimenting with.
Belhaven beach
Stuart Pirrie is the helmsman of the RNLI lifeboat that was diverted from an exercise to attend to the incident.
He said: “We could see the ‘whale’ in the breaking surf as we neared Belhaven beach and the folk round about it seemed to be intent on inflicting as much pain on it as they could.
“However as we got closer the ‘whale’ appeared to be an unusual shape.
“It was too rough for the boat to safely get onto the beach so one of the crew jumped in and waded ashore to investigate.”
“Slightly unusual”
The group of ‘savages’ turned out to be enthusiasts who had travelled down to the beach to take advantage of the large waves.
They had launched their wave generator to see how much electricity would be generated by the swell.
Stuart Pirrie said: “We did think it was slightly unusual for a whale to come under attack from day trippers, but in this world you never know.”
