We humans leave a lot of trash in our wake. Plastic and air pollution are terrible, but something that flies under the radar a bit is old ropes and traps from fishing boats. And on October 11, a juvenile humpback whale was found pretty well entangled in a whole pile of fishing ropes, two buoys, and a crab pot. Thankfully, rescuers were able to cut the animal free. The US National Park Service released footage of the rescue, which can be seen above.
The whale was spotted near Gustavus, Alaska, and according to reports, the NOAA had received multiple tips from sailors who had seen the poor thing struggling to free itself. A team sent out drones equipped with cameras and were able to come up with a plan.
“This was a complicated entanglement with a line through the whale’s mouth, and wrapped around the animal’s tail stock,” said Fred Sharpe, advanced large whale entanglement responder with Alaska Whale Foundation, in a statement. “The drone imagery assisted tremendously with our understanding of the entanglement and how to prioritize our cutting attempts.”
Luckily, the weather was good. High winds and stormy seas can make an operation like this nearly impossible. The team was dispatched in a small boat with a tool that’s basically a big old knife on the end of a pole. After snipping off parts of the trailing rope and crab pot which weighed around 300 pounds, they were able to make a final cut.
“The turning point came when we were able to cut the rope that ran through the whale’s mouth and was wrapped around its tail,” Chris Gabriele, a whale biologist with Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, told IFL Science.
When the whale was freed from its trappings, it simply swam away and disappeared. The next day, however, the team found it again, using its fluke patterns to identify it. They watched it carefully in the following days to make sure it would be okay, and so far, it appears to be just fine. Hopefully it can avoid landing on a wing foiler, like this one managed to do.
