SYDNEY, June 9 \u2014 Wildlife rescue teams scoured Australia\u2019s east coast today to find and free a distressed humpback whale tangled in a rope.<\/p>\n
Aerial footage showed the whale swimming south of Sydney Harbour trailing a rope attached to a floating buoy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes it more difficult for the whale to dive,\u201d said Pip Jacobs from whale rescue group ORRCA.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tiring for the whale, which is already in a state of distress being tangled.\u201d<\/p>\n
The whale was about eight metres (25 feet) long, Jacobs said, indicating it was still \u201cquite young\u201d.<\/p>\n
The rope appeared to be tangled around the whale\u2019s left pectoral fin, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way it is moving is quite erratic,\u201d Jacobs told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s moving south which is unusual.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey should be heading north as part of their migration.\u201d<\/p>\n
Teams of volunteers and wildlife rescue experts were searching the coastline to pinpoint the whale\u2019s location, she said.<\/p>\n
But efforts had been hindered by choppy waters and blustery winds.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf conditions allow and we have eyes on the whale, the best-case scenario is we have a successful disentanglement.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they are dragging gear it hinders their ability to swim freely. The worst-case scenario is the whale can\u2019t feed or swim.\u201d \u2014 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SYDNEY, June 9 \u2014 Wildlife rescue teams scoured Australia\u2019s east coast today to find and free a distressed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3847],"tags":[37574,70,1862,16,15,22023,1717],"class_list":{"0":"post-170176","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-rescue","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-sydney","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-whale","14":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}