This has not been a very good week.

Between the 4.6 magnitude earthquake earlier today and the death of Sphen – one half of Sydney’s same-sex penguin couple who, along with his husband and fellow penguin Magic, raised two foster children (also penguins) – the Sydney news cycle has been particularly depressing.

So, when I saw that a whale had been stuck in fishing nets since yesterday afternoon, I was terrified the poor marine mammal would become another victim of this awful, very bad, no-good week.

Experience Broadsheet in a new way. Join Broadsheet Access.

SIGN UP

The whale in distress was originally noticed by a whale-watching cruise around lunchtime yesterday. The cruise captain contacted the National Parks and Wildlife Service, who dispatched the large whale disentanglement team (what a job title!).

The team tried their hardest, but couldn’t free the whale last night and, when it got too dark, they attached buoys and a tracking device to him so they could try again in the morning.

Overnight, the tracking device fell off, so it took the team until 7.30am to locate the whale again – it was found 400m off Bradley Head in Mosman. Reporters on the scene said they could hear it crying out in distress. (Sob!)

The team of rescuers worked tirelessly in an inflatable boat until they eventually freed the whale. At 11.19am, the Organisation for the Rescue and Research of Cetaceans in Australia (ORRCA – great acronym!) second vice president Jessica Fox (no relation to the Olympian) confirmed to the Sydney Morning Hearld that the “whale is now free”. And the whole city breathed a collective sigh of relief.

So what else do we know about this whale? It was originally reported to be a baby, but it’s actually a juvenile, which means it’s between one and four years old, it’s a humpback and it’s absolutely stoked to be swimming out of the harbour and free of that nasty fishing net.

Keep swimming, little whale!