PHILADELPHIA - A beluga whale that spent a week in the Delaware River earlier this month has returned - but not to the Delaware.

Nine days after the whale named Helis was spotted swimming back to the ocean, the Coast Guard said it received reports of the 12-foot white whale beneath the Girard Point Bridge on Philadelphia's smaller Schuylkill River - about 65 miles from the Atlantic Ocean.

A Philadelphia police boat was providing an escort Wednesday night as the whale headed farther up the Schuykill.

Authorities believe the whale, originally from Canada's St. Lawrence River and estimated to be about 30 years old, swam up the Delaware for a week earlier this month to feed on shad making their spring spawning run upriver. The Delaware forms an eastern boundary for the city of Philadelphia, and is about three miles from the Schuylkill, which forms the city's western boundary.

"I wish he would go home," said Terri Frady, spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is trying to keep the animal safe.

Frady repeated that people should give the whale room and not do anything to change its behavior. She added that video or photos could help officials assess the whale's health.

"Any better documentation we can get would be helpful, because one thing that's still on the table, that we can't rule out, is that he may be ill," she said.

Beluga whales are most often found in colder waters in the Atlantic. Helis was first spotted in Trenton on April 12, and swam between there and Beverly, about 15 miles to the south, over the next four days.