We were in remote waters off New South Wales, Australia, when things took an unexpected turn, says Olaf Meynecke. During a research expedition, we’d successfully tagged a whale but it was moving quickly and we lost sight of it, taking our expensive research equipment with it.
The light was fading so we had to return to shore. Our $10,000 satellite tag was drifting further south away from the Australian continent, overnight, with all my data on it.
When we returned to our accommodation, I noticed I was getting satellite transmission from the tag. It had come off the whale and was drifting south. Early the next morning, we started our mission to recover it. We drove around 30 miles south past the Green Cape Lighthouse, which is nearly the most southerly point of the Australian continent.
At that point, we lost signal and I had to rely on the radio signal coming from the tag drifting on the surface. My entire focus was on getting the tag back as quickly as possible before we lost it completely.
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While we were searching, one of our crew members saw a yellow float in the distance. We parted slightly from our mission to quickly check out the float in case it was rubbish and we could retrieve it from the water.
As we approached, we saw a severely exhausted humpback whale entangled in rope and chain, dragging heavy gear through the water. Two other whales remained nearby, repeatedly attempting to assist the entangled individual and supporting it from underneath. It was a heartbreaking sight.
The whale was still strong enough to drag the gear but was quickly becoming exhausted.
Thankfully, our research team had highly experienced crew members who had disentangled many whales in the past.
You can’t just jump right in and disentangle a whale without assessing the situation so we sent up a drone and put a GoPro in the water to try and see what we were working with.
There was a chain and rope wrapped around the whale as well as the heavy float… which had a phone number on it. We only had one bar of reception but we called the number. Bizarrely, an accountant answered. Unhelpfully, they had no idea what kind of rope and chain it was.
Through the GoPro footage, we could see that, luckily, the chain was not actually wrapped around the whale. The disentanglement team had a knife and a pole so, by making a few good cuts, we might be able to free the animal.
But each cut would have to be perfect. Once the knife became blunt, we'd have no more chance of freeing the whale. We would only have two or three cuts.
While the team worked, I flew the drone trying to keep the crew updated on their progress. After about 30 minutes, the whale was almost freed. Then I noticed the drone’s battery was running out. It urgently needed to land.
I looked over my shoulder, and I could see one of the crew members holding the rope that was still on the whale. The whale was pulling him and the boat, but he didn't want to let go before he was sure he'd got all the rope off.
This was making the boat move in circles, making it almost impossible to land the drone. Were we about to lose another piece of equipment during this trip?
In that moment, we freed the whale and one of the crew grabbed the drone, just in time. The moment was captured from the air, with our drone running out of battery just as the final ropes fell away.
We all just looked at each other, stunned, wondering “what just happened?”.
We couldn't believe it. But although we found and freed our whale, it's sobering to think that many aren't that lucky and die tangled in the gear.
In all the excitement, I'd forgotten about my $10,000 tag, drifting somewhere nearby. We soon found it about 50 metres away from where we'd just freed our whale.
Olaf Meynecke Olaf is a marine scientist at Griffith University and leads the international Whales and Climate Program, specialising in marine mammal ecology and marine conservation. His research focuses on whale behaviour, habitat use, migration, and the impacts of climate change and human activities on marine megafauna. He is particularly recognised for integrating biotelemetry, acoustic monitoring, and citizen science to address large-scale ecological questions. He is also the founder of Humpbacks & High-Rises, a long-running citizen science program that engages the public in whale research along the Australian coast.
Top image is a film still from Meynecke Whale and Climate Research Program
