Humpback whale in Sydney Harbour freed from rope entanglement in hours-long rescue
A humpback whale has been freed after being entangled in ropes in Sydney Harbour.
Jessica Fox, the second vice-president of volunteer organisation Orrca, confirmed the rescue late on Friday morning.
The young adult whale, between 10 to 15 metres long, was spotted about 1pm on Thursday by a tour group, who alerted Orrca.
A GPS tracker was reportedly attached to the whale on Thursday before rescue efforts were paused overnight. However, the tracker detached and the whale had to be relocated on Friday morning.
At 9.30am, according to a video posted to Orrca’s Facebook page, the mammal was between Middle Head and North Head. The group reported an “entanglement [of] ropes and buoys attached to [its] tail”.
New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service and Maritime NSW had vessels on-site monitoring the whale and enforcing an exclusion zone, a spokesperson for the former said.
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The large whale disentanglement team was dispatched to assist in freeing the animal.
Wildlife officers used specialised cutting equipment to free the whale from ropes that had wrapped around its tail. The equipment featured a long pole with blades that do not impact the whale while cutting through rope.
“It’s obviously a very complicated operation,” the NSW National Parks and Wildlife service area manager, Ben Khan, said during a press conference.
“We’ve got a live animal. It’s very, very large.
“The entanglement was around its tail … it’s quite a simple entanglement, but it was a very active animal. So it had to be done very carefully this morning.”
The rescue team worked from 6.30am to 11.15am.
“It took a lot of attempts to get to the whale, to slow down to a safe speed to be able to get in close enough to make that safe cut,” Khan said.
The humpback swam towards the Sydney Heads and open ocean after being cut free.
With Australian Associated Press.
