A 2-year-old whale was found dead in Australian waters after it seemingly got entangled in a shark net.
It was found off the east coast
A two-year-old humpback whale was found dead and entangled in a shark net on Tuesday, October 28.
It was found off the coast of New South Wales at Coledale Beach in Australia, per the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, as reported by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
It’s not the first to get entangled
The young whale is not the first to get entangled in a shark net, being the fifteenth this year, but it is the first to be confirmed dead.
Ashley Ryan, president of the Organization for the Rescue and Research of Cetaceans in Australia (ORRCA), said a necropsy still needs to be performed.
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It still needs to be confirmed
“It’s all speculation at this point, but it does look like the whale has died after becoming caught in the shark net. But without performing a necropsy, we won’t be able to say for sure,” Ryan said, per ABC.
The whale was likely migrating
“We’ve seen live whales in shark nets in NSW, but it’s not very common for this to happen,” Ryan added.
She also noted that the young whale was likely on its way migrating south to Antarctica.
Shark nets are distributed to different beaches
The beach where the baby whale was found is one of 51 others equipped with a shark net.
These nets are meant to deter sharks from reaching the shore and were installed under the New South Wales government’s Shark Meshing Bather Protection Program.
They reduce potential interactions with sharks
The program’s site reads, “While the nets cannot provide a guarantee that a shark interaction will never happen, we believe they have been effective in greatly reducing the potential number of interactions.”
The nets have acoustic ‘whale alarms’ and ‘dolphin pingers’ to warn off the animals, DPIRD said per The Guardian.
But the meshing program is coming under scrutiny
The meshing program has come under rising scrutiny in New South Wales because of incidents like entanglement of animals and the recent death of the baby whale.
Parliament member candidate for NSW Cate Faerhmann said the animal’s death is ‘absolutely heartbreaking’.
It could’ve been prevented
Faerhmann added that this incident could’ve been ‘totally preventable’ which makes it more tragic.
She said, “Every year when the nets go in, we see more whales and other wildlife like dolphins, endangered loggerhead turtles and critically endangered grey nurse sharks trapped, injured or killed.”
