11-03-2025
Aussies warned after 'cruel' discovery sparks 900km outback journey
Aussies are being warned to stop using illegal fishing hooks and to make sure they don't leave any fishing equipment in the environment after a turtle no larger than a dinner plate was left fighting for its life after ingesting a hook. The concerning discovery even led to a near 900-kilometre round-trip journey and a delicate surgery to have it removed.
The turtle swallowed the fishing hook near the coastal city of Geraldton in WA's Mid West region and was found in early January in the Chapman River, with the hook attached to a fish trap. After unsuccessful attempts to remove the hook were made by local wildlife rescuers, the turtle was driven to a specialist wildlife hospital in Perth — some 450 kilometres south of where it was first discovered. A surgery using a small endoscope finally removed the fishing gear from inside the small animal.
"To leave a trap, to intentionally trap an animal and potentially kill it because you're not going out there to check those traps, is bloody cruel," Geraldton local Michele Walters told the ABC. It was her daughter who found the injured turtle.
The dinner-plate turtle has now been released back into the Chapman River and expected to make a full recovery.
Yahoo News has reported on a long list of incidents when fishing equipment caused serious injury to wildlife, including a young kookaburra who was found with a fishing lure pierced through its mouth, a seabird with a hook stuck in its neck and wing, and a 50-kilogram sea turtle with fishing hooks pierced through its intestines.
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Wildlife rescuers continue to be inundated with incidents involving fishing equipment, saying it's an issue plaguing coastal towns across the country.
"Fishing line entanglement is massive in the oceans and rivers... A lot of wildlife drown from fishing lines and hooks because it gets caught up and they can't get out of the water," rescuer William Watson previously told Yahoo News after wading in a neck-high river to rescue an ibis tangled in a fishing line.
After the ibis incident, WIRES echoed Watson's sentiment and said fishing lines and hooks are "a really big problem" and "the big message is to please, if there aren't any council bins for disposal, take it home and dispose of it there".
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