KARACHI: A rare whale that got entangled in a fishing net in waters about 122 nautical miles off the Khobar creek was successfully released by fishermen recently, it emerged on Thursday.

The species about four metres long was later identified as longman’s beaked whale (Indopacetus pacificus), also known as ‘tropical bottlenose’ or Indo-Pacific beaked whale.

It’s the first time that the species was sighted in the northern Arabian Sea. The endangered species is the rarest and the least known member of the beaked whale family. The Khobar creek is about 150km away from Karachi.

Also read: Big sunfish caught, released into sea

“We thought it’s a malhar (dolphin) but later came to know that it is a vesar (whale) and that, too, an endangered one. The entire crew enthusiastically participated in the rescue operation and managed to release it without an injury, though one of us was hit by the whale’s tail. It took us half an hour to get the marine mammal freed from the net,” said Iqrar Mohammed, captain of Al-Azaan tuna boat.

Fishermen had been educated on the importance of marine mammals and other non-targeted species that they now considered as their asset and tried to protect them, he added.

Narrating an incident that occurred about two decades ago, he said that fishermen in a similar situation cut off a whale’s tail to help it get out of the net.

“It died after bleeding profusely. I could never forget its cries and the blood spilled over the sea,” he recalled.

Speaking to Dawn, Mohammad Moazzam Khan, technical adviser on marine resources working with World Wide Fund for Nature-Pakistan, said that the species was known from only two skulls until two decades ago.

“Its distribution is not fully known, but it appears to be limited to the Indo-Pacific region mostly from Somalia and South Africa, the Maldives, Kenya and Sri Lanka. There are no known records from the northern Arabian Sea and there is very little information available about the species because of its rare sighting.

“This is the first record from Pakistan. In this particular case, the species was found in deep waters at a depth of around 1,563 metres. What makes this sighting more remarkable is its successful release possibly for the first time in history,” he said.

The WWF-Pakistan, he said, had been conducted training sessions for fishermen, making them aware of the importance of endangered marine animals since 2012. Earlier, these species often got killed after getting entangled in nets.

“It’s great to see that the fishermen’s mindset is changing. Marine mammals are of no financial benefits to them. Fishermen have been told that if they release marine mammals and other endangered species, they would make the sea healthy and help enrich fish stocks,” he explained, adding that so far 15 whale sharks, three manta rays and two sunfishes had been successfully released.

Director of WWF-Pakistan Rab Nawaz said that the presence of longman’s beaked whale showed the richness of marine biodiversity present in Pakistani waters.

“Second, we need to see how we can motivate fishermen to use friendly fishing gears (to reduce by-catch) and abandon use of gillnets for catching tuna as these nets are known for high incidences of mortality, especially in cetaceans.

WWF-Pakistan, he said, had initiated a programme under which observers had been posted on tuna vessels since October 2012 and vital information about by-catch species, for instance, turtles, sharks, dolphins, whale sharks and manta rays, had been collected.

“These efforts would help protect marine biodiversity that in turn would benefit fishermen” he said.

Published in Dawn, February 13th, 2015

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