You can see how big the whale is compared to the diver in the front of the picture and the floating net with buoys. The buoys cause horrible drag which must have been really stressful for the whale.

It is hard to grasp how massive the whale really was.

She is able to breathe thankfully. Look how blue and clear the water is - the visibility was amazing.

You can see the air whooshing out her blow-hole as she breathes in relief!

She is slowly being cut free by this point - look how enormous she is.

She is almost free by this point and the rescue team get a thrashing as she starts to move around.

You can make out the tiny dot of a diver’s head amongst the foamy water.

Free at last she disappears with a flick of her great tail.

Free at last! Free at last! Free at last!

The team looks on in horror at the net. These are the nets causing all the damage and death. We have collected this net. One day we will collect each and every one of the donated nets and burn on the beach. That will be a great day. For the meantime, I hope you have enjoyed the pictures. It was a wondrous resuce and I truly hope the pictures will help everyone realise how serious this problem is and how important it is that we stop the use of these nets. Please help us start our fishermens’ education workshop on environmentally friendly fishing methods by donating. 

Thank you.

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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!

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They are brought in by the fishermen in their dug out canoes. You can see how horribly tangled up they are in the deadly nets. They are carefully lifted out of the canoe and cut free.

Once free of the nets, the turtles are able to swim off to freedom back to the open ocean.

This is Danny looking on with relief and I imagine great pride

Who ever said turtles had it easy? Imagine getting tangled up in a net as you are swimming along and eventually drowning because you couldn’t breathe. And I thought I had had a bad day today!!

Please help us save these turtles by donating. This turtle release programme is only a stop-gap, band aid measure. We HAVE to get the fishermen alternative ways of fishing and for this we need funding. Mending the nets is not a viable, long-term solution. We need to educate them and present them with alternatives that work. You can help us by donating.

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Isn’t that the most amazing sight? I would give my right arm to be the person who took these pictures!

Rumour has it that the Galapagos islands might be a breeding ground for whale sharks. They see a lot of large females there. These pictures of an albino whale shark are incredible. Yet again we are reminded of how mysterious this creature really is!!

Enjoy your weekend.

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You can see how horribly tangled it is in the deadly net.

Thank you to the Diving The Crab team in Diani for saving yet another turtle. Any donation you make will go directly to this turtle project. We need to urgently stop the fishermen from using these nets. You can help us by donating.

Thank you!

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I received this email from Jane Spilsbury in Watamu. She and her husband Steve Trott used to run the Watamu Turtle Watch. I have posted in earlier blogs about the fantastic work they do. This is a picture of Jane and Steve working with a small turtle who was sick.

Turtles get constipated really easily. When this happens they have to be force-fed a special solution to unblock them. First you have to hold their little mouths open with a stick.

Then you insert the tube with the medication. As you can see it is involved, delicate work. We watched Steve and Jane help turtles all morning on our visit with them.

Please have a read of the below and try to help Lesley who also does critical work in Australia. She has helped the Watamu Turtle Watch on numerous occasions so we now must help her.

Thank you! 

Dear Friends, Many of you will be familiar with internationally renowned Lesley Baird who runs CHELONIA Wildlife Rehabilitation & Release Centre in Broome, Australia. Lesley has worked tirelessly and single-handedly to rehabilitate sick and injured wildlife for the last 8 years, an operation which she finances herself.  For five years she has advised Watamu Turtle Watch on the rehabilitation of sea turtles, often speaking at length on a daily basis in respect of critical patients. She has helped WTW save over 50 sick sea turtles during Steve Trott’s and my time with WTW. She devotes her time selflessly, 7 days a week, often working over 12 hours a day. Unfortunately the future of Chelonia is threatened. Below is a précis of a plea directly from Lesley made to the Broome community. Please click on Chelonia’s website below to make a donation however small. Thank you for your time, and please pass this message on to anyone you think can help- Jane Spilsbury 

Hello   …   Chelonia is a not-for-profit, fully volunteer facility which specializes in the rehabilitation and release of wild birds and reptiles, including sea snakes and endangered sea turtles.Since 2000 when I established Chelonia I have personally carried nearly all the costs of operation. Now that Chelonia takes in around 700 patients per year I find that I can no longer afford to keep Chelonia running without outside financial assistance.It costs an average of Aus$350 per week to keep Chelonia running, this money covers food, special dietary formulas, and medications. No overheads such as phone, car, or office supplies are included, I will continue to cover those expenses myself. There is no other organization operating in Broome which cares for birds or reptiles. If Chelonia is forced to close there will be nobody to take in those 700 or so patients each year. This means that if you find a bird or reptile which needs help there will be nobody to take it to, and it will most probably have to be euthanased.  Thank you for taking the time to read this email. It will be wonderful if you can donate any amount to help keep Chelonia running. Any donation that you can afford will  be very gratefully received.  You can make your donation by clicking on the web link below. On the HOME page you will find a donation facility which will enable you to make a Credit Card donation through PayMate, OR you can mail a cheque to the address listed below. Thank you     …  

Lesley Baird  

PO Box3266
Broome, Western Australia, 6725
http://www.multiculturalwa.net.au/chelonia  

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Daniel the manager has been working tirelessly with the local fishermen in an attempt to get them to release turtles that get caught in their nets. For each turtle that they release the fishermen are given a small reward to encourage better fishing practices. Whenever the fishermen have to cut their nets the arrangement is that they bring their nets plus entangled turtle to Danny for him to deal with. The fishermen bring the turtle to the Diving The Crab dive base in their dug out canoes.

Danny and his team will carefully remove the net and release the turtle back into the ocean.

Without Danny’s intervention these turtles would have drowned to death in the nets. It is so important to stop the use of the nets, in particular the habit the fishermen have of putting them on our coral reefs. I cannot begin to tell you how damaging these nets are to our marine life. I have described the huge problems they cause in earlier entries to this blog.

Together with dive operators like Diving The Crab we hope to encourage the fishermen to stop using the nets altogether. The initiative that Danny has started is a fantastic way to getting to know the fishermen and although our aim is get them to stop this method of fishing, having them bring the turtles to us is a good start. They also realise that they can release the turtle themselves so sometimes they don’t need to bring the turtles ashore and will just let Danny know that they have released a turtle. So far they have released 7 turtles which is brilliant. They are now more aware and educated thanks to Diving The Crab’s intervention.

We hope to get everyone in our community to work together to save our turtles.

These turtles pictured say a BIG THANK YOU to everyone at Diving The Crab!!

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 We are wishing him all the best with his search.

Here he is holding the 2 tags we found last time -

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Stany Nyandwi, who left his family, his home, and his homeland behind when he helped stage a daring transport of orphaned chimpanzees out of war-torn Burundi to safety in 1995, has been named a Disney Conservation Hero for 2008.

Nyandwi is the head caregiver at the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Uganda, which is home to 48 orphaned chimpanzees. Despite little formal education, he is regarded among the most knowledgeable chimpanzee welfare experts in Africa.

Nyandwi will receive a plaque and a $500 prize for being named a Disney Conservation Hero, an annual awards program developed by the Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund that “recognizes conservation initiatives are only as successful as the community and the local people involved with the project.”

This marks the second consecutive year a representative of the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA) has earned a Disney Conservation Hero award. In 2007, Jonathan Kang of the Limbe Wildlife Centre in Cameroon was honored.

“PASA is extremely proud of Stany Nyandwi and the work he has accomplished on behalf of chimpanzees in East Africa,” said Doug Cress, executive director of PASA. “Stany’s dedication to chimpanzees – even when it meant possibly losing his family or his own life – is remarkable. He is yet another shining example of the courage and commitment we see every day at PASA sanctuaries across Africa.”

Born in Burundi, Nyandwi had only rudimentary education when he applied for a job as a housekeeper / cook at the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) chimpanzee project there in 1989. At the time, the JGI-Burundi functioned as a halfway house for confiscated orphan chimpanzees, but so many were arriving and in such poor condition that Nyandwi was quickly converted from a cook to a chimpanzee caregiver. He had a particular affinity and connection with the youngest – and often most damaged – chimpanzees, and he quickly developed a specialty in reviving those closest to death.

But Burundi was a volatile and dangerous place by the mid-1990s, and Nyandwi’s Hutu ethnicity made him a target for pro-Tutsi military forces. A daily six-mile trek to and from work meant Nyandwi often had to walk in the dark, a practice that grew more dangerous when two JGI-Burundi staff members were murdered in 1994. Despite the risks, Nyandwi usually arrived early for work and stayed late.

At the end of 1995, JGI decided it was no longer viable or safe to keep the sanctuary going in Burundi announced plans to relocate all 20 chimpanzees to the newly created Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Kenya. But while Nyandwi was eager to help transfer the chimpanzees, he knew his decision to leave Burundi would not permit him to return to his wife and two children. At that time, those who left Burundi were labeled as traitors or rebels, and were often arrested and charged with treason upon their return.

Nyandwi, who had never flown before, traveled in a small plane with 10 chimpanzees in plastic pet carriers to Kenya. For the next six weeks, Nyandwi was left alone in Kenya to care for the 10 infants. Away from his family, his countrymen and living alone, Nyandwi thought of nothing but the chimpanzees, and on several occasions walked five kilometers and used his own salary to buy food and medical supplies for the infants.

“My heart is with the chimps,” Nyandwi said. “I care for them like my own children. People are killing chimps in the forest, the babies are suffering. They need us to take care of them.”

After helping the chimpanzees acclimate to their new home in Kenya, Nyandwi was asked to stay and train the Sweetwaters staff. He then transferred to the new JGI chimpanzee program in Uganda, and stayed in touch with his family in whatever way he could, sending funds to ensure their survival and welfare. In the end, after almost three years of letter-writing and government appeals, Nyandwi’s family was allowed to join him in Uganda.

Today, Nyandwi is the head caregiver for Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary. His main role is the welfare of the chimpanzees in his care, and many visitors to the island comment on Nyandwi’s “special” relationship with the chimpanzees.

PASA was formed in 2000 to unite the sanctuaries that care for chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos, drills and literally thousands of other endangered primates across Africa. For more information, please visit www.pasaprimates.org or contact PASAapes@aol.com. 

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The whale sharks were taken from Taiwan. They were apparently on the slaughter list and if this is the case then they were indeed saved from a gruesome death. If you think about the mechanices involved in getting a whale shark from Taiwan all the way to Atlanta, Georgia you might start to appreciate the lengths they went to!! First they had to be found and coralled into a net at sea then herded into a netted pool where they were kept for some time (2 weeks I think). This gave the sharks a chance to get used to people.

It also gave them a chance to get used to being hand fed.

They were then scooped up out of this pool…

And deposited into their container which would be home for the next 36 hours.

Because they were so important they got a police escort to the airport like the proper VIPS they are! This was the only picture that made me smile during the presentation (albeit a rather small smile).

And then they were loaded in the plane for the long journey to Atlanta. The plane was fully sponsored by UPS for USD 1 million, yes that’s right, USD 1 MILLION.

When they arrived in Atlanta the same process was repeated and they were finally released into their new home. Divers were stationed round the edges so they could orientate themselves properly and not get confused by the glass. They are examined regularly and for the first time we get pictures like these: this is the inside of a whale shark’s mouth -

They do regular gastric sampling which involves sticking a huge tube down their throats.

And (drum roll please) the inside of a whale shark’s stomach - I bet you haven’t seen that before!

Many people don’t agree with holding highly migratory animals in captivity. To be honest, I think it’s terrible. Volker, along with many others, disagrees with me. He says that everyone who goes to the aquarium and sees a whale shark will become a whale shark ambassador. I do hope he is right. I don’t agree with keeping a whale shark in an aquarium to make money (because let’s face it, that’s what this is really about). It has been scientifically proven that whale sharks dive down to hundreds of metres several times a day. They travel thousands of miles, peacefully cruising our seas. How can it be ok to stick them in a pool the size of football stadium? It doesn’t sit well with me. You are now able to swim with the whale sharks in the aquarium too for (I think) USD200.

Having said that, the Georgia Aquarium takes really good care of the sharks. They are healthy and seemingly happy. They are in much better shape than the poor sharks in the Japanese aquarium in Okinawa. Someone told me that the sharks there have sores on their fins from bumping into the glass all the time.

These kids are watching a whale shark and it’s probably the most amazing thing they have ever seen. The reasoning is that a lot of people will not have the opportunity to see a whale shark in the wild.

Bruce Carlson was peppered with questions after his talk on the Georgia Aquarium. People wanted to know where they would get their whale sharks from in future now that Taiwan has banned the whale shark trade. He wouldn’t tell us. He did say something that struck me as true though - he said we don’t live in a perfect world. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need to hold any animals in captivity at all. There is no doubt that we are learning a great deal about whale sharks thanks to those in the Georgia Aquarium. I suppose it’s all about where you draw a line and whether you feel the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

For me, I look at the misty mountains in the top picture of the Taiwanese coast where the sharks were captured and my overwhelming feeling is one of great sadness.

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