Skip to content
All news
  • All news
  • About whales & dolphins
  • Corporates
  • Create healthy seas
  • End captivity
  • Green Whale
  • Prevent deaths in nets
  • Scottish Dolphin Centre
  • Stop whaling
  • Stranding
  • Whale watching
Vaquita. Photo Thomas Jefferson

Scientific Committee gives first ever official species extinction warning

Photo: Thomas Jefferson We have welcomed the urgent call by experts to protect the vaquita...
blue whale

Whale fossil from Peru may have been heavier than blue whale

Scientists examining the bones of a 39 million-year-old ancient whale have concluded that it may...
Humpback whale © Christopher Swann

Humpback whales breach in synchronisation

Humpback whales are renowned for their incredible acrobatic displays, but a family in the USA...
Long-finned pilot whale

Unusual activity witnessed before pilot whale stranding

Just days after a pod of long-finned pilot whales stranded on an island in the...

Humpback whale freed from rope entanglement by passing orcas

Photo by Shari Manning

A strange incident involving a pod of orcas and an entangled humpback whale off the coast of western Australia has left experts scratching their heads.

Observers from Whale Watch Western Australia captured drone footage of what appeared to be a number of orcas freeing a humpback whale from a discarded rope that had become wrapped around the whale's tail fluke and so putting him or her in danger. But it is not clear if this was a deliberate rescue by the orcas.

Often orcas will attack young humpback whales, sometimes by grabbing the whale’s tail and holding them under the water until they drown. But in this case the orcas appear to make several attempts to remove the rope from the stricken whale before he or she was freed and able to swim safely away.

WDC  research fellow, Erich Hoyt, was puzzled by the incident, and why the orcas did not attack the whale. ‘It could be simply that the orcas have just eaten or are in the middle of some other behaviour, or that the entanglement somehow put them off.’

 

Please make a donation

HELP WDC STOP ENTANGLEMENTS AND DEATHS IN NETS

Leave a Comment