A baby humpback whale is swimming free once again after becoming trapped in cray pots and buoy lines off the coast of New Zealand.
The Wellington District Police maritime team received a call after a group of fishermen spotted the youngster around 9 a.m. Sunday morning in Fitzroy Bay, near Wellington Harbour.
“It was entangled in the cray pots and the buoy. It was just a baby whale, a juvenile, and having difficulty and it was in a little bit of distress,” Constable Kyle Smith, from the Wellington Police maritime unit, told The Dominion Post.
Police reached out to a team of whale experts from the New Zealand Department of Conservation for help in freeing the trapped humpback, who despite being just a baby was still over nine metres in length.
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Video posted to the New Zealand Police facebook page shows police and wildlife officials working to try and cut the entangled whale loose.
The rescue ended up taking several hours, but around 5:30 p.m. Sunday evening they were finally able to cut the last of the lines loose, and the baby humpback was free at last.
“They cut the lines off him and he swam away out to sea and he seemed pretty happy,” Smith said.
Or, as the great Montgomery Scott once said, “There be whales here!”
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