Italian coast guard divers have been working for days to free a massive sperm whale caught in an abandoned fishing net in the open sea off the Sicilian Aeolian Islands.
The whale was spotted struggling to get free of a net usually used for fishing illegally for swordfish.
In a video posted on Facebook, divers and biologists worked tirelessly to free the whale by cutting the lines with knives.?
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According to reports, it is the second time in less than a month that the Italian coast guard has had to intervene to free a sperm whale tangled in a fishing net.?
?Lost or abandoned nets get caught in rocks and coral, and continue to trap wildlife - from fish to turtles, whales and dolphins.??
¡°These damn fishing nets are doing huge damage. I haven't slept in 36 hours ... divers managed to take off some of the net but then it started to move and it became too dangerous,¡± biologist Monica Blasi told the daily newspaper La Republica.Blasi said they attached a light to Fury's tail so as not to lose sight of it as they tried to remove the rest of the net.
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The coast guard said in a statement that operations were hampered by the large size of the whale, which had become highly agitated while trying to free itself from the tangle.
Due to its repeated efforts to free itself, the whale had been given the name ¡°Fury¡±.??The coast guard indicated that the fishing lines were illegal, claiming to have seized 100 km (around 62 miles) of illegal fishing nets in the southern Tyrrhenian Sea so far this year, reports FoxNews.?
The Coast Guard said it seized over 100 kilometres of illegal nets in the southern Tyrrhenian sea since January; such nets are similar to the one the sperm whale got trapped
According to?Weforum, somewhere between 600,000 to 800,000 tonnes of discarded fishing gear ends up in our oceans every year. This accounts for a large portion of the plastic waste in marine ecosystems.??
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