It’s 2am and I can’t sleep. I had wanted to wait and post this with pictures but I think it’s too important to wait.

Today a large humpback whale was found entangled in a fishing net by a sport fishing boat. They immediately radioed it in and Danny from Diving The Crab went with a team of divers to try and cut her free. Diani Marine also had a boat of divers out in the area. Unfortunately Volker was not out today otherwise we would have had some incredible underwater footage (he is absolutely devastated that he missed the action!).

I have spoken a lot in recent posts about these large drift nets donated to a group of local fishermen by an NGO. These nets are illegal in many countries and for good reason. They are extremely destructive and particularly devastating when placed on coral reefs which is what many local fishermen do. They are the single most deadly threat to our marine life here in Diani at the moment and a typical example of good intentions gone horribly wrong – the nets were donated without proper research being done on the ground on what their effects would be and no follow up or management.

We are just getting to the stage now where our fishermen will call us and report creatures caught in nets like the turtles Danny has been releasing. Years ago the fishermen would simply cut off whatever part of the animal that was caught in the net and we have found whale sharks bleeding to death with the caudal fin hacked off. I dread to think what might have happened had this whale been found by local fishermen in their small dug out canoes.

Danny tells me that the whale was between 12 – 15 metres long and very large in girth. He thinks she was pregnant. She was badly entangled in the fishing net and her pectoral fins were pinned to her side. She couldn’t really move apart from thrash her tail and it is a mercy she didn’t drown. It took the divers 2 hours to cut her free. They tell me that it was the most incredible experience of their lives combined – to be so close to the one of the largest living mammals. Because the net was all over her body the divers got right up to her face. Danny told me he looked straight into her eyes and when he touched her face he was utterly awed. He says her face was obviously very sensitive because whilst removing the net on her face she seemed to tremble, although she kept more or less still. He says she knew that they were helping her and she stayed still until she was free.

She made lots of sounds as the divers worked. Anyone who has heard whale noises will know how beautifully spiritual and evocative they are. Danny told me the sounds she made spoke right to his very core. It really is like music he told me, you don’t have to understand it for it to totally transport you. Whale music is other-dimensional. It speaks to parts of you even you don’t know existed.

Personally I can’t believe that it has come to this – we have been going on and on about turtles and whale sharks and now we have a humpback whale caught in these damned nets. I have written an email to organisations and governments that I hope can help us because this situation is now critical.

Of course it is absolutely wonderful that Danny and his team freed the whale. They tell me she swam off with a big thrash of her tail and I looked at Danny’s pictures in amazement. The whale was bigger than the boat! You can see a mass of foaming water and then tiny heads of the rescue divers! I will add his pictures when I can. I was going to call this post “Humpback Whale Nearly Drowns” but then I changed it to “Humpback Whale Set Free”. I think this will be a turning point for our project and I do believe that we will one day see the end of the killer nets!

Please help us if you can – and once again an enormous thank you to Danny and Diving The Crab for what they are doing to help the dire situation we have here with the nets. I told Danny that he would be going straight to heaven on a one way ticket for what he did today! There aren’t many people in the world who can say they have saved the life of a humpback whale. Thank you Danny!