A humpback whale caught in a 100 metre length of rope off Cape Solander was successfully disentangled yesterday afternoon by a specialist National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) team.
NPWS spokesperson Peter Bergman said the entangled sub-adult whale, which was travelling north at speed with two adults, was first spotted on Tuesday morning off the Kurnell peninsula.
“The specially-trained NPWS crew located the entangled whale in the early afternoon about one kilometre off North Head and was able to attach buoys to the animal to slow it down to enable the rope to be cut loose,” Mr Bergman said.
“Once the whale was disentangled, the team collected the rope and continued to monitor the whale to ensure there were not any additional entanglements.
“Conditions were very favourable today, with a calm sea and the whale appearing during the middle of the day when we had sufficient daylight to complete this dangerous disentanglement operation.”
The multi agency response included the RMS, DPI Fisheries, Marine Rescue NSW, Port Authority NSW, NSW Police and ORRCA.
“This is an excellent outcome for this whale, which is just one of around 30,000 humpback whales migrating north along the NSW coast at this time of year,” said Mr Bergman.
