SYDNEY, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- Rescue crews have resumed efforts to free a juvenile humpback whale entangled in Sydney Harbor fishing nets.
As of Friday morning, police and maritime authorities were tracking the whale and enforcing an exclusion zone around it near Bradleys Head - a peninsula protruding from the north shore of the harbor - as it dragged a line with buoys attached.
A whale-watching group spotted the whale in distress on Thursday afternoon local time, but initial attempts to detach netting wrapped around it were suspended due to failing light.
Rescuers led by volunteers from the wildlife group the Organisation for the Rescue and Research of Cetaceans in Australia (ORRCA) attached a GPS tracker to the whale on Thursday.
"Hopefully the conditions are favorable, the tracker works and the whale is freed nice and early in the morning," ORRCA president Ashley Ryan told Nine Entertainment newspapers on Thursday night.
However, the tracker became dislodged shortly afterwards. The whale was again spotted by authorities at 7:30 a.m. local time on Friday after initial fears it had swum out of the harbor overnight.
ORRCA on Wednesday asked for residents of New South Wales to help track three separate humpback whales spotted entangled in nets off the eastern state's coast between the cities of Newcastle and Tweed Heads north of Sydney.
"The behavior of entangled whales can be unpredictable, and they can change directions of travel," it said in a statement on social media. ■
