Another long wait for DOC
When Wellington fisherman Andrew Harding saw a young humpback whale snared by a craypot line, he was sorely tempted to jump in and cut it free.
Instead he took the official advice and rang the Department of Conservation. It then took seven hours for someone to turn up and free the clearly distressed animal.
Harding was reminded of this event, in September last year, after hearing this week that Whitianga harbourmaster Matthew Collicott had been stood down from some of his duties because he used a Waikato Regional Council boat to help free a trapped orca.
DOC has come under public pressure after it failed to send a rescue crew to the breeding female orca, which was trapped by a craypot line for 16 hours at Kennedy Bay in the Coromandel.
Harding said that, if he had known it would take so long for help to arrive in his case, he would have cut the whale free himself.
‘‘They are beautiful animals, and it’s hard to see them that stressed because of a fishing line.’’
He had gone fishing early that morning in Wellington’s Fitzroy Bay when he noticed the snared whale.
‘‘It was a juvenile humpback whale, about 10 metres long,’’ he said. ‘‘It couldn’t dive down, couldn’t go anywhere.
‘‘It was really distressed as the tide was running in at about six knots. It was like a river, it was that fast.’’
He considered diving in to free the entangled whale, but instead phoned a helpline run by DoC.
‘‘I couldn’t get through to anyone for a while, then when I eventually did I was passed from one person to the other.
‘‘Once I eventually got through they told me under no circumstances was I to get in the water and help it.
‘‘They wanted to send a specialist up from Kaikoura, and were going to charter a plane, but couldn’t get it in the end. It was 3pm before someone arrived.
He stayed by the pot to warn other boats. As the whale grew tired, he feared it would die.
‘‘There didn’t seem to be any urgency from DOC, and to watch the whale struggle as it did was really sad. It was frustrating there were no localised operators to call.’’
His frustrations were shared yesterday by New Zealand executive director of Greenpeace Russel Norman.
‘‘What both incidents point to is that DOC is under-resourced,’’ Norman said.
‘‘New Zealanders really value marine life, and I think they want to see specialised people readily available to respond to these situations.’’
DOC spokesman Steve Brightwell said its current minimum response time was four hours.
‘‘We respond as soon as is reasonably practicable. ‘‘We have to source people who are appropriately trained, so it all takes a while to organise.’’
‘‘We are not prepared to put people’s lives at risk to save animals, and the only time we operate an emergency response is when there is a mass stranding of whales.’’