‘The worst way of dying’: scientists urge coordinated effort to stop whales getting tangled
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Experts recorded 45 entanglements off Australia’s east coast in 2024 – but believe that’s ‘the tip of the iceberg’. At least 45 whales were entangled by fishing ropes and line on the east coast in 2024, and experts are calling for better management of fishing gear in Australia to prevent marine suffering.
![[Whale with rope and line wrapped around its tail near South West Rocks, Australia]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/37ea8f5b71ac1e59b19c27906734040189593793/0_0_1868_1068/master/1868.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Dr Olaf Meynecke, a marine scientist at Griffith University, said the issue of preventing whale entanglements was “largely ignored in Australia”. Meynecke and his team recorded 45 confirmed entanglements on the country’s east coast last year, but he believes the true figure is about 100. “They’re really just the tip of the iceberg,” he said.
Only about 15 whales were successfully disentangled in 2024, and improving disentanglement efforts on the east coast would require better coordination across multiple jurisdictions, Meynecke said. Emblematic of the problem, he added, was the case of a juvenile humpback spotted near South West Rocks in New South Wales on 5 December in bad condition, dragging rope and floats from its tail.
Two weeks later, on 17 December, it was spotted further south near Terrigal. Meynecke estimated from drone footage that the whale was travelling 1.2km/h – so slowly that it was “literally floating south” with the east Australian current. A rescue mission successfully removed the rope and floats, but the whale died and washed up days later at Lakes beach in Budgewoi. Meynecke estimated it had “dragged the fishing gear for at least two months”.
