![Pinterest](https://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://uknews.evprotec.com/rescuing-whales-on-australias-humpback-highway/&media=https://uknews.evprotec.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/AA13pLMs.jpeg&description=It's like a needle in a haystack: how do you find one entangled whale in a vast expanse of ocean? © NSW Parks and Wildlife Service Getting tangled in fishing gear can be a death sentence for whales Then how do you free the 20-tonne giant from a maze of constraints when it is panicked, sometimes angry, often injured, and always determined to evade you? That's a riddle that marine rescuers like Wayne Phillips have to solve on an increasingly regular basis.Each year, an estimated 40,000 humpback whales leave the freezing waters of Antarctica on the world's longest mammal migration.They make their way up Australia's east and west coasts to the tropics before returning, calves in tow, a couple of months later.For most Australians, the so-called "humpback highway" from May to November is a fun and exciting spectacle.But for Mr Phillips and his team at Queensland's SeaWorld, it brings an undercurrent of anxiety.The need for rescue is constant - and growing. "We always seem to be out looking for whales," he says.How rescues workTeams largely rely on reports from the public, using them to guess a troubled whale's movement and trajectory. If it is found, a complex and exhausting task begins.First, rescuers must essentially immobilise the enormous mammal before it nervously speeds away. Ironically this involves methods originally used to hunt whales, says Susan Crocetti, a rescue specialist with New South Wales Parks and Wildlife.Teams approach in a dinghy before attaching large floats to whatever the whale is entangled in, to slow the animal and tire it out.Then they carefully plot which lines to cut and when, before taking to them with a hooked knife attached to a long pole. © NSW Parks and Wildlife Service The equipment is designed to limit any risk of injury to the whale Much has been made of the impact of shark nets on whales, but rescuers say the real killer is "ghost gear" - commercial fishing nets, lines and even anchors which are lost or abandoned at sea."Sometimes th){kind=link}
It’s like a needle in a haystack: how do you find one entangled whale in a vast expanse of ocean?
Then how do you free the 20-tonne giant from a maze of constraints when it is panicked, sometimes angry, often injured, and always determined to evade you?
That’s a riddle that marine rescuers like Wayne Phillips have to solve on an increasingly regular basis.
Each year, an estimated 40,000 humpback whales leave the freezing waters of Antarctica on the world’s longest mammal migration.
They make their way up Australia’s east and west coasts to the tropics before returning, calves in tow, a couple of months later.