Durban - A massive southern right whale swam back to freedom on Wednesday after getting trapped in the anchor rope of a shark drum-line at Margate on the South Coast.
A drum-line is a floating drum that is anchored to the sea floor, along with a baited hook, to catch large sharks.
KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board operations director Mike Anderson-Reade said local residents reported seeing the distressed whale splashing off the main beach at Margate just after dawn.
Anderson-Reade said the 30 ton adult male, about 13m long, became entangled in the drum-line anchor rope in the early hours.
Aggressive
“He was not hooked, but seemed to have rolled over and got the anchor rope twisted around his tail. Then he started pulling the whole lot out to sea, along with the 35kg anchor. Right whales are no jelly-babies. They are extremely strong and aggressive animals. He was smashing away with his tail while we were busy cutting away the anchor rope.
“Fortunately he was not hurt,” said Anderson-Reade, who also directs whale rescue operations in KwaZulu-Natal on behalf of the South African Whale Disentanglement Network.
“Freeing a whale in these circumstances is dangerous work requiring specialist training and equipment. We urge the public not to approach whales, but to contact us immediately for assistance.”
Southern right whales were hunted almost to extinction in the 18th and 19th centuries by American and European whalers. Estimates by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature suggest that about 150 000 of these animals were killed by whalers over this period, with somewhere between 48 000 and 60 000 killed in the 1830s alone.
Killing these whales was banned officially in 1935, although Soviet whaling fleets were thought to have killed another 3 000 right whales illegally during the 1960s.
According to National Geographic, right whales were named by whalers who identified them as the “right” whale to kill on a hunt. They feed on zooplankton and other tiny organisms and are regular visitors to the KwaZulu-Natal coast in the winter months.
The Mercury