A heavily entangled humpback whale was first sighted in Batemans Bay on the NSW South Coast on June 13 and has finally been freed after a two-day rescue operation by Sea World Foundation. The whale was freed from ropes and buoys at Evans Head on June 21.
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NewsTranscript
00:00I'm very close to the drone now, I see it mate, I spot it, I've got the spot.
00:04Yeah that was one for the memory banks, that was huge. So starting yesterday we've been tracking
00:11this animal, another one coming up the New South Wales coast. Amazing support from the public,
00:15from Orca, from New South Wales Parks. We did have the benefit of drone footage, so we have
00:20been sort of preparing and making a game plan. We were out off the coast of Yamba just before
00:25dark to stumble across it and our main objective was to get one of our satellite trackers on it,
00:30which would then enable us to be back out here today and hopefully find it further up the coast.
00:35We were fortunate enough to get out here pretty early this morning and after inspecting a couple
00:40of other animals nearby we were, we located the animal, made a plan to get one of these big kegs
00:45on board to really try and slow that animal down and also to maintain good vision on that animal
00:50as well. Our process was start at the front and work our way back and Benno got an amazing cut
00:56in on the main part of the rope there. We slowly ticked through the boxes and we removed that first
01:01line, we got a second line off that was going underneath and then, and right, right then we
01:06actually did the final hurrah and we got that last bit of rope off that was connected to four floats
01:11that it had been dragging the whole time. Instantly as soon as that last bit of gear came off the
01:16animal, the whole swim pattern changed. It took off at about four to six knots so, so good to see
01:21that reaction, see that what we do out here is definitely benefiting these animals that are
01:26they're coming up here with gear on them.