Hacker breaks Norwegian internet

‘Hacker’ in this case being a humpback whale and the Norwegian internet being that of the village of Skulsfjord, near Tromsø in northern Norway.

Luckily for Hacker, its plight was spotted by wildlife photographer Audun Rikardsen, who was out in his boat searching for new picture opportunities during the polar winter in the Kaldfjorden, a whale-rich fjord near Tromsø in northern Norway.

Audun got lucky. Here’s his image of the local coastguard trying to free the whale:

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And yes, the yellow cord that they thought was fishing gear, wasn’t:

In the morning, they summoned a diver from the fire and rescue team, who went down and investigated. The cord was wrapped round the whale’s head, disappearing into its mouth at the bottom of the picture, before reappearing on the other side, winding round a fin and tangling up the tail. Eventually, after some difficulty, the whale was freed.

Only then did the rescuers realise that the cord was a subsea internet cable that should have been 170 metres down on the bed of the fjord.

Fjords are deep, hey? That’s over three times the depth of the deepest point in False Bay.
And while Audun may have got his picture (and it’s incredible), he then had to wait a while to actually share it, as all communications to Skulsfjord – where he lives – were knocked out for a fortnight by his new-found cetacean chum.

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