Whale freed in Sydney Harbour

ABC NEWS (Australia)

A complex rescue operation has succeeded in freeing an entangled whale in Sydney harbour. It was first sighted in waters between manly and camp cove late yesterday. The national parks and wildlife service attempted to free the whale until the search was suspended due to poor light. Rescue efforts resumed this morning, and the whale was eventually released

Transcript

00:00Well, the reality is we don't know how it became entangled.

00:05It could have potentially been entangled for a lot longer than what we knew about.

00:09But thankfully, thanks to citizen scientists and observations from people through ORCA,

00:14we were able to see and locate this individual yesterday.

00:17Now, this whale was one of many or thousands humpback whales just doing its normal thing,

00:23its migration.

00:25Sometimes whenever you have whale presence as well as fishing gear presence, sometimes

00:29through curiosity or just overlap, we have seen an entanglement in fishing gear and it's

00:34quite awful.

00:35In this case, I'm smiling so much because it has just been disentangled.

00:39And for those who don't know, whale entanglement can look quite different.

00:43And so I've kind of got a little prop here thanks to Winston, my humpback whale, and

00:47showing you, in this case, what the entanglement was kind of like.

00:51So it was around the tail, which meant that the whale could swim, which is a good thing,

00:55but authorities in order to help it, and this is a collaborative effort with New South Wales

00:59National Parks and Wildlife Services, as well as their large whale disentanglement team,

01:04New South Wales Maritime, as well as indigenous rangers, like the Gamay Rangers, all assisting.

01:10And they were able to put buoys on the whale to help and assist it slow down.

01:16So it's kind of weird.

01:17You've got an animal that's entangled and yet you want to put more things on it?

01:20That doesn't sound right, but it really helps because if the animal slowed down, and even

01:25what I just saw, you could see the whale where it is because it was swimming underwater and

01:29all you could see was the buoys.

01:32So really helpful.

01:33And in this case, the whale has successfully been disentangled, which means the line has

01:36come off the whale and hopefully, with the helicopter going out to the sea, that's that

01:41whale going back on the humpback highway, which is good news.

01:44Such good news.

01:45It's okay from what you can tell, Vanessa, because it would have been distressing for

01:49it to be entangled in the first place.

01:50And then, of course, to have people helping to free it.

01:54But, you know, people near it.

01:58Absolutely. So is the whale okay?

02:00I hope. I don't really know.

02:02The reality is this animal has been through a huge ordeal.

02:06Being entangled in fishing gear is an awful thing.

02:08But then having boats, drones in the busiest harbour on earth, Sydney Harbour, it's just

02:15incredible to see where this has just unfolded.

02:17So it is no doubt very fatigued.

02:20And one of the things I did here is because when I was so close to it on land, you could

02:25when they come up to take a breath, they go.

02:28But and I've seen it with a few whales, exhaustion kind of was most likely kicked in

02:33with this whale. And so the sound that I heard as it breathes was this sound.

02:38So it's like the like, oh, I'm exhausted.

02:41But it's it's just a few observations that I'm relaying here.

02:45And I mean, if you have something entangled around your body, you're not used to this.

02:49And then you have boats, helicopters, drones.

02:52There's a lot going on.

02:53And why this whale chose to stay in the harbour, I mean, it's really good for us because

02:59it stayed in one spot because unfortunately the GPS tracker came off.

03:04But being able to relocate it today in the harbour was, in my opinion, just gold because

03:09it meant that this whale was saying, well, in other words, this whale was wanting.

03:14Well, I don't know if it was wanting help, but it stayed close.

03:16We're able to find it because if it went onto the humpback highway, it could have been

03:20like looking for a needle in a haystack, even though this whale is the size of a small

03:25bus. It could be quite tricky to see.

03:27So we have had a really good success story here.

03:31And credit goes to New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service, their large whale

03:35disentanglement team, as well as New South Wales Maritime, a fantastic effort keeping

03:40people at bay, as well as the Gamay Rangers who also assisted, who have been trained up

03:44collaboratively with New South Wales National Park Service, as well as Orca as well, who

03:48had people around the place keeping an eye out for this whale.

03:51So very much a collaborative effort, but highlighting the risks that these whales do face

03:56in Australian waters and globally, which is whale entanglement.

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