A young whale was fortunate to be found by rescuers after getting entangled in one of the most deadly forms of ocean trash.
On June 28, the South African Whale Disentanglement Network (SAWDN) received an alert that a whale in the Walker Bay area, Hermanus, appeared to be in trouble.
According to a release by the nonprofit National Sea Rescue Institute, some fishing line had "embedded into the flesh" of a juvenile Southern right whale roughly 26 to 30 feet long, suggesting the endangered creature had been encumbered for a long time.
It is unclear how the whale had become trapped in the fishing line — or whether the line had floated in on ocean currents from another location — but one thing was certain: Rescuers had to act urgently to prevent the situation from worsening and causing the death of the whale.
Ghost nets — fishing nets that have been abandoned, lost, or discarded — are the deadliest type of marine plastic debris, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
Once the nets enter our oceans, they linger. One estimate from DWS Group reveals the nets take 600 to 800 years to break down.
In the meantime, creatures that get caught in the nets can die painfully, suffocating if they are unable to surface or becoming too exhausted to function. If their movement is only slightly hindered, they may still have problems reproducing.
Fortunately, human intervention can make a difference. One family saved a pair of sea turtles from ghost nets after encountering them on their sailing adventures. In Greece, volunteer divers have removed nearly 30 tons of ghost nets from the waters, along with hundreds of thousands of toxic plastic bags (which are easy to ditch for reusable bags that are durable and reliable).
In the case of the Southern right whale, the Miroscha (a local whale charter vessel) monitored the whale's location until the SAWDN team arrived, per the nonprofit's media release.
Given the size of the creature, rescuers had to move carefully. However, after they cut away parts of the line, the whale made a quick exit.
While SAWDN couldn't complete the job the first time around, another charter vessel, the Umnati, spotted what appeared to be the same whale later in the day and reported the information. Using its specialized cutting equipment, the SAWDN was then able to free the whale from around 90% of the remaining line.
At the time of the report in July, the team was still monitoring the area with the assistance of charter vessels to see if it could remove the other 10% of the line. Other efforts to do so had failed after poor weather made it too dangerous to attempt. However, the whale was already showing signs of improvement.
"The line left behind however does appear to be loose and the whale is moving freely," SAWDN's Mike Meyer said in a statement published by the nonprofit.
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