A humpback whale named Bladerunner was sighted just south of Eden in New South Wales.
Tracey Harris, a dedicated photographer, managed to capture the rare sighting of this whale while aboard a commercial cruise boat. Through her camera lens, she immediately noticed something unique about the whale.
“I kept photographing her and she kept moving just on the surface of the water and then her back came up even higher, so I kept the focus on her, and then the tail came up and that’s when I saw the chunks out of her, I thought ‘oh my gosh’,” she said, adding that the whale’s battle scars looked like a tiger.
Duane March, who heads the marine wildlife section of the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), pointed out that Bladerunner is noteworthy not only for the significant scars but also for the unfortunate reminder they serve of human impact on animals.
“It’s a really distinct, really traumatic injury that has been inflicted by human activity,” March said.
Bladerunner bears distinct scars, measuring around 30 centimeters in depth, along her left side and right tail fluke, the result of a collision with a ship’s propeller in Sydney back in 2001.
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