Teams of sea rescuers and wildlife experts on Wednesday successfully freed a whale that got caught in fishing nets near a popular Baltic Sea resort in Poland.
It took about an hour for the rescuers to cut and remove the nets and allow the whale to swim into the open sea, close to the popular summer resort and beach in Miedzyzdroje, where the stranded animal was spotted in the morning.
The rescuers used boathooks on long poles, rather than knives, to loosen and remove the nets, rather than cutting them with knives, in order to avoid harming the animal.
Konrad Wrzecionkowski from WWF Poland, a conservation organization, said the whale made a “great and positive impression” on him but the action was potentially dangerous for the rescuers and was very stressful.
Whales normally live in the open waters of oceans, but sometimes individual animals swim from the Atlantic Ocean into the Baltic Sea through the Danish Straits.
