Fishermen have released a common bottlenose dolphin unhurt back into waters about 100 kilometres South of Kund Malir, along Balochistan coast. Fishermen entangled the bottlenose dolphin in their tuna gillnet in offshore waters. Dolphins and whales are known to drown quickly once they get entangled in gillnets, WWF-Pakistan said on Friday.
Dolphins are known to come to surface about three times per minute to breathe under normal circumstances. However, if more active, then they may surface 10 to 12 times per minute. In case of entanglement in fishing nets, the dolphins cannot come to surface to inhale air, which usually results in their death, it said.
WWF-Pakistan has initiated a study on the assessment of mortality of cetacean (dolphins and whales) in the gillnet fisheries. In all cases dolphins were observed to die by the time the net is heaved from the sea.
However, on April 01, a tuna gillnet boat Al Raza Hussain operating about 96 kilometres South of Kund Malir, Balochistan observed a seven feet long common bottlenose dolphin, which was still alive.
Luckily the fishermen of this tuna gill-netter were trained by WWF-Pakistan and knew the procedure to release such animals. Without wasting anytime, the fishermen released the bottlenose dolphin which swam away immediately, it said.
According to Muhammad Moazzam Khan, Technical Advisor (Marine Fisheries) of WWF-Pakistan, common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) are found in offshore shelf waters along the coast of Pakistan.
"Being a very active dolphin, it immediately dies once entangled in the fishing net because it cannot reach the surface to breathe. This is a rare case, but hopefully not the last in which one such dolphin was successfully disentangled from the fishing net and released alive by fishermen," he said.
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