PANAMA CITY, Fla. — Who better to come to the aid of a pelican who is in trouble than biologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, especially when the bird itself asks for help?
NOAA Fisheries staff in Panama City, Florida, heard a knock, and it turned out to be a brown pelican that was hitting its beak against the door.
A staff biologist noticed the bird was entangled in heavy-duty fishing line, with a double-barbed treble hook embedded in the right wing and cactus spines in its foot.
Typically, staff deal with predators such as sharks, but as the news release said, “Using the same steady hands they use for tagging and surgically implanting acoustic tags in sharks and sawfish, the team safely restrained the bird.”
The team cut the barb from the hook and removed it. They also took off several feet of monofilament line wrapped around the wing.
It took about 10 minutes, and the bird was calm, “almost as if it knew it was in good hands.”
Once the hook, line, and spines were removed and everything was checked out, the bird flew off.
To prevent cases like this from happening to other animals, NOAA Fisheries said to discard fishing line properly. Put it in a secure container, scrap it in designated recycling bins, and switch to barbless hooks so they are easier to remove.
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