Rescuers free whale trapped in nets off Burleigh Heads on the Gold Coast
A HIGHLY-stressed humpback whale has been successfully freed from shark nets after a dramatic rescue on the Gold Coast today. We talk to the experts about the rescue, the whale’s injuries and what needs to change moving forward.
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THE subadult humpback whale caught in shark netting off Burleigh Heads this morning, could have been tied up for hours, experts say.
Sea World director marine sciences, Trevor Long, said they worked with Queensland Boating and Fisheries Patrol’s Marine Animal Release Team to free the animal in just over an hour.
“It broke through the net, taking a section with it and moving out to sea,” he said.
“Unfortunately we don’t know when it was caught. It could have hit the net at six o’clock last night and been caught the whole time, we’re not sure.”
He said the seven metre, 20-tonne whale was “completely enveloped in net” and rescuers faced a dangerous task to cut away the net with the stressed humpback thrashing around.
The whale could be seen constantly rolling around trying to free itself while rescue teams were nearby.
“This made it quite a delicate rescue,” he said.
“It was very tired, and that allowed the rescue to go relatively easy.
“It’s only when you get an animal that’s just recently trapped that causes some problems.
“But the thrashing is normal — these animals are very distressed, as you can imagine.
They’ve got a fear of drowning, just like we have. They don’t understand the situation, they just want to escape the net.”
The whale suffered a lot of cuts and ‘superficial damage’ around the tail and peduncle, but nothing, he said that would affect the animal continuing its migration north.
“I’d say it has a lot of lactic acid built up, and that’s why it didn’t swim off immediately, and why it hung around in the water,” he said.
“The net was wrapped around the pectoral fins and then the tail. What Queensland Boating and Fisheries did was a very good job, they attacked it, started at the head of the animal, worked their way back. We were fortunate just to be there at the end, just to pull the net off.”
He said rescuers are equipped with special tools to remove the net safely.
“The knives have a guarded blade that you can out the back of the knife up against the animal and slide it forward, and it picks up the net as it goes and cuts it without doing any damage to the animal.
This is the second animal caught in shark nets so far this year, and Mr Long raised the question, what will it take for shark nets to be removed?
“The entrapment situation of whales in shark nets along the Queensland coast is going to be problematic.
“We’ve got over 30,000 whales passing our coast this year, and it’s still increasing by 10 per cent.
“So from this point on, we will see more animals trapped.
“These shark nets are indiscriminate killers, there’s whales, dolphins, turtles, dugongs — a whole range of animals caught.
“We make a plea to Government to look at this situation, a lot of precedents have been made to changes in shark net programs which hasn’t affected bather safety, so there’s lots of things we should look at.”
Mr Long said it’s not the trapped ones we should be most concerned about, but the ones who swim away with net caught around them.
“We get probably 10-12 that are actually caught, but there’s a number that hit the nets and break through, and we don’t know what those numbers are,” he said.
“All these animals that do get themselves out, possibly go with an amount of net that brings them undone, because of the continual movement and rope around their tail, it eventually cuts and cuts and cuts.
“Not only is it a painful death, but it’s long and slow. So these situations are very critical when you do get the net off, you get all the net off and don’t leave small sections of net on there.”
EARLIER:
A highly-stressed humpback whale has been successfully freed from shark nets after a dramatic rescue on the Gold Coast today.
The large humpback whale became caught in the nets off Burleigh Heads around 10am this morning.
A team from Sea World worked for about 1.5 hours to free the trapped mammal which was freed at 11.30am.
The Queensland Boating and Fisheries Patrol’s Marine Animal Release Team worked with Sea World to free a whale from shark nets.
Queensland Shark Control Program Manager Jeff Krause said the Gold Coast Marine Animal Release Team was on location and worked to cut the whale free from the nets.
“The Marine Animal Release Team was activated after the whale entanglement was reported earlier this morning,” Mr Krause said.
“This is the first whale this migration season to be caught in shark nets on the Gold Coast.”
A record number of 30,000 whales are expected to pass the Gold Coast this season as the population continues to boom.
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