What a happy ending for the poor young whale caught in marine debris in Sydney Harbour!
We are closing the blog now, but you can read a full account in an upcoming story by myself and Nick O’Malley, who was out in the harbour watching the events unfold live.
Here is some aerial footage from NSW Maritime, one of the licensed drone operators assisting with today’s mission.
Entanglements with marine debris are the risk to whales, besides the overarching risk of climate change.
The International Whaling Commission estimates that globally, 300,000 whales die of entanglements every year. The next biggest direct risk is ship strikes, at 20,000 deaths a year.
Whale numbers have increased since whaling was banned in international waters, but their food source is under threat from climate change and unsustainable fishing practices.
Commercial fishing trawlers suck up vast quantities of Antarctic krill to turn into pet food, health supplements and farmed salmon feed.
The debris includes fishing lines, nets and traps, and also equipment for swimming including shark nets, which have come under fire for the number of entanglements with non-target animals including the critically endangered grey nurse sharks, turtles and marine mammals.
However, Luke McSweeney, team leader of the disentanglement team, said whales did not often become entangled in shark nets, and his team was trained to deal with it.
Authorities don’t yet know for sure whether the marine debris wrapped around this whale’s tail was from fishing. It was described by Chris Borrow-Jones from the disentanglement team, as “nylon stranded rope”.
ORRCA second vice president Jessica Fox said ship strikes occurred less often in Australian waters, but entanglements were a big problem.
Earlier we reported there were at least three other whale entanglements on the NSW coast. Fox said that calmer weather meant more people out on the water and better able to see whales, increasing the frequency of sightings and reports of entanglements.
She also said some equipment could have been dislodged in the recent winter swell. This same weather event, which happens most winters, caused coastal erosion to NSW beaches and uncovered a rocky cove at North Maroubra.
Many opponents to offshore wind farms cite their concerns for whales, but the idea that wind farms kill whales is part of an organised disinformation effort.
Speculation is rampant about what to call the young whale at the centre of the rescue effort.
Some of the suggestions around the traps included: Tangles, Whale McWhaleface, Lucky, Bumpy, Wally, Nettie and Humpfree.
But sadly, the authorities have pooh-poohed the name game.
Luke McSweeney, team leader of the disentanglement team said: “We don’t name wildlife. It’s Whale.”
NSW Maritime principal manager Shane Davey insisted they did not even have a nickname for the animal.
Some whales have names. This is Keiko the orca, who starred in the Free Willy movies and is pictured here in Norwegian waters in 2003 after being released into the wild in Iceland.
Luke McSweeney, team leader of the disentanglement team, has explained how the rescue operation unfolded.
At the press conference, he said they used specialised cutting equipment, including long poles with cutting blades to ensure that when they cut the ropes, it doesn’t affect the whale.
He said it was simple wrap, basically a loop around the base of the tail and over the top of the whale fluke.
“It presented a reasonably simple cut for us to do, we’ve had much more complicated cuts than that,”
“The challenge with that whale was the fact it had so much energy, and it took quite a long time for us to tire it out so we could get in and do that cut safely.”
Earlier McSweeney gave an interview to Nick O’Malley while they were still on board the boats.
He explained they attached the floats in what is called a “kegging operation” to try to tire out.
“Otherwise the whale is still evasive, it’s swimming fast, it’s manoeuvring, and we can’t get in close enough to cut the lines until it’s tired and sitting on the surface so we can safely do the cuts.”
He said the crew made a couple of attempts, but the whale was still too active, so they “backed off” and waited for it to fatigue more.
Chris Borrow-Jones, the crew member who leant in with the pole for the final cuts, added that he needed to get the knife in a precise location to cut the nylon stranded rope wrapped around the tail fluke.
Staying with the press conference, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service Area Manager Ben Khan said the rescue was “complicated”.
“We’ve got a live animal that’s very, very large,” Khan said. “The entanglement was around its tail - it was quite a simple entanglement, but it was a very active animal so it had to be done very carefully this morning.”
Khan said it took quite a few attempts to get the whale to slow down to the point where the team could safely cut the debris from its tale.
Rescue workers responsible for freeing an entangled whale arrive at Little Manly Beach.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
After abandoning the effort at sunset last night, the team was back on on site by 7.30am this morning, and it took until 11.15am to free the whale.
“Once it was cut free, it took off free swimming, and looked fantastic,” Khan said.
Khan said it was about 13 metres long, which gave it a sub-adult to young adult age. (A sub-adult is five to eight years, while an adult is over nine years, but this means the whale was probably older than a juvenile, as previously estimated).
Khan said the team was not concerned about the whale beaching itself, but criticised the number of drones and helicopters in the air following the whale.
“Drones and aircraft are a real challenge, they don’t mix very well,” Khan said. “We are going to get more whales in the harbour this season, hopefully not entangled. Where there are drones and helicopters - if we could just keep drones out of the picture.”
While he did not say so, exceptions would include drones operated by ORRCA and Transport for NSW, which were licensed to operate and played a role in the rescue mission by providing information to NPWS.
NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service Area Manager Ben Khan said there were no concerns for the whale’s welfare at this point.
“The whale appeared to be swimming freely,” he said at a press conference.
Rescue workers responsible for freeing a trapped whale arrive at Little Manly.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Khan said the whale was being tracked from headlands and boats, but no longer had a satellite tracker. We reported earlier that a tracking device was attached to the whale yesterday, but it fell off overnight.
NSW Maritime principal manager Shane Davey added that maritime boats tracked the whale as “it headed out the heads and pointed itself south.”
Davey said his agency had to manage other boat traffic on the harbour, which was complicated because the whale was swimming near ferry routes. He was pleased the whole operation occurred without disrupting passenger services and timetables.
He said the exclusion zone was 100 metres from a whale and 300 metres from a mother and calf, and people had been well behaved.
The National Parks and Wildlife Service held a press conference this afternoon about the rescue of a juvenile humpback whale in Sydney Harbour this morning.
Watch it back below:
Close encounters with whales can carry serious risks. Last weekend a man was knocked unconscious by a whale’s tail while travelling in a tinny near the Gold Coast.
Jetski riders off the coast of Coolangatta called emergency services just before 9am on Sunday when a whale reportedly collided with the man in his boat.
The man was brought to shore by paramedics and taken to Gold Coast University Hospital, where he was treated for facial and spinal injuries.
Queensland Ambulance attended the man who was knocked unconscious by a whale’s tail while out in his boat.
The Queensland Ambulance Service said he was in a stable condition.
Last month, a father and son were both injured when a humpback collided with their catamaran off Geraldton in Western Australia.
While the rescue of the juvenile humpback whale in Sydney Harbour had a happy ending, there are at least three other whales entangled in fishing tackle along the NSW coast.
ORRCA is the charity at the frontline of whale entanglements and strandings because it has a 24/7 hotline, and will then coordinate the response with the National Parks and Wildlife Service.
ORRCA second vice president Jessica Fox said whale entanglements had been reported up and down the coast, including near Newcastle, Forster and Sydney.
“They haven’t been sighted for the last two days so we do ask that if anyone is out by the water, to please keep a lookout for entangled whales,” Fox said.
“An entanglement can be on the front of the whale, it could be behind the whale, it could be trailing far behind the whale as well. So if an entanglement is witnessed, we ask that people collect the GPS location, the direction of travel, the approximate distance from shore, and phone that through.”
ORRCA hotline: 02 9415 3333
Janie Barrett caught this frame of the NPWS staff celebrating after the successful rescue mission.
The moment rescue workers realise they have successfully freed the juvenile whale that had become entangled in fishing tackle.Credit: Janie Barrett
A statement from the National Parks and Wildlife Service said the team was able to free the entangled humpback whale at about 11.15am, and crews were now monitoring the whale to ensure it was swimming freely.
The statement thanked the members of the NPWS Large Whale Disentanglement team, NSW Maritime, Port Authority of NSW and volunteers from the Organisation for the Rescue and Research of Cetaceans in Australia (ORRCA).