Italian coastguard divers fight to free massive sperm whale from fishing nets
- The female whale was spotted on Saturday struggling to get free of a net usually used for illegally catching swordfish
- It is the second time in less than a month that the Italian coastguard has had to intervene to free a sperm whale tangled in a fishing net
The female whale was spotted on Saturday struggling to get free of a net usually used for fishing illegally for swordfish.
The coastguard said in a statement that operations were hampered by the large size of the whale, which had become highly agitated.
Due to its energetic efforts to free itself, the whale had been given the name “Fury”. It is the second time in less than a month that the Italian coastguard has had to intervene to free a sperm whale tangled in a fishing net.
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“These damn fishing nets are doing huge damage. I haven’t slept in 36 hours … divers managed to take off some of the net but then it started to move and it became too dangerous,” biologist Monica Blasi told daily newspaper La Repubblica.
Blasi said they attached a light to Fury’s tail so as not to lose sight of it as they tried to remove the rest of the net.
On Sunday, scuba divers worked hard to cut loose the fishing net before the whale escaped into deeper waters.
With the fishing net still partially wrapped around her tail, the sperm whale “could struggle to go dive down and hunt in deeper waters”, Blasi said.
The Greenpeace environmental group said the fishing net the whale got caught in, used to catch swordfish, was outlawed some 20 years ago.
It urged the Italian government to enforce the ban more forcefully.
A male sperm whale was trapped in another net off the Aeolian islands three weeks ago, but in that case scuba divers managed to free him completely.
