Whale caught in internet cable nicknamed Hacker

A whale caught in an internet cable was nicknamed Hacker. The whale, a humpback, off the coast of Norway, was entangled in a yellow subsea internet cable.

Fortunately a wildlife photographer, Audun Rikardsen, was in his boat near Kaldfjorden, a fjord near Tromso in northern Norway, when he saw the entangled humpback.

Rikardsen alerted the local coastguard, and returned to the area that same night with a friend to find and free the whale. After an hour they saw the humpback. ‘Gradually, the whale started to understand we were there with good intentions,’ said Rikardsen after the whale was cautious of the humans. Rikardsen thought the whale was caught in fishing line.

They struggled for four or five hourse to free the whale, but they couldn’t cut through the cord. ‘It came right alongside our tiny boat, all 30 tonnes of it, and could easily have tipped us over, but instead, it was asking for help.’

The coastguards arrived, but had to abandon the attempt until morning. In the morning they called a diver from the fire and rescue team, who went underwater to investigate how the whale was trapped. The cord was wrapped around the whale’s head, and in its mouth, around a fin, and tangled in its tail. Eventually they freed the whale.

It was only when they freed the whale that they realised the cord was a subsea internet cable that should have been 170 metres underwater on the bottom seabed of the fjord. Rikardsen’s village, Skulsfjord, had no network or cellphone coverage for more than two weeks until the cable was replaced. They called the whale, Hacker.

However, Rikardsen, the wildlife photographer, did get this amazing photograph (www.audunrikardsen.com).

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23231000-400-hacker-the-humpback-whale-who-got-tangled-in-an-internet-cable/

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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