FREEING RIGHT WHALES IN A BIND.
Freeing them from fishing gear dangerous work
Government agents, working with a team of “disentanglement experts,” are surveilling three North Atlantic right whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, all of them entangled in fishing gear.
Freeing the whales from the ropes, or at least monitoring them, is highly sensitive work considering the North Atlantic right whale is at risk of disappearing entirely, with only around 400 believed left on Earth and already six confirmed deaths this year.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada said the three whales have all been spotted in the last week, around the Gaspé Peninsula. The coast guard spotted one with a rope wrapped around its tail, “apparently dragging something heavy.” A Transport Canada plane spotted another, which had rope trailing from both sides of its head. A researcher reported seeing another, around Miscou, N.B., that the fisheries ministry said was initially entangled in U.S. waters this spring.
The three whales are in waters where fishing is prohibited — part of the government’s efforts to protect the endangered right whale from being ensnared in ropes or struck in the Gulf of St. Lawrence’s heavy shipping traffic. But The Canadian Press reported last month that a federal study found the protective measures might not be enough to keep the whales out of danger in the Atlantic.
The ministry said it was surveilling the three right whales, both by boat and by plane, “to get a better sense of their entanglements.”
“You don’t know anything until you get to the animal,” said Wayne Ledwell, one of Canada’s few veteran whale disentanglers.
“The right whales, it’s just so easy for them to become entangled because they’re skim feeders. So they’re going around ... with these huge big gaping mouths open.”
Ledwell, based in Newfoundland, hadn’ t been called to assist the search. He said Sunday that his counterpart based in New Brunswick, Mackie Greene of the Campobello Whale Rescue Team, was handling the case. Greene was unable to be reached for comment Sunday.
Officials were still considering whether to rescue the whales, or attach tracking devices to the ropes the whales are dragging around. The main concern is the safety of the crews, the government said in a news release Friday. Whale rescues can be extremely dangerous, even when attempted by veterans. In 2017, Greene’s co-founder at Campobello Whale Rescue, Joe Howlett, was killed after disentangling a whale.
“If I stopped whale rescue, Joe would come back to haunt me. I know he would,” Greene told the CBC last year.
Ledwell, in Newfoundland, said to free whales, you need to understand them. They can be dragging gear — from crab or lobster fishing — for years.
“You don’t know until you get over to the animal and see what gear is on it and how the gear is on it and how the animal is behaving,” he said. “They start trumpeting, blowing, that’s a sign that they’re nervous. If it starts slashing its tail, swishing its tail around, that’s a dangerous whale. You don’t know what that’s going to do.”
And if you cut off the wrong line, freeing it from the gear that’s anchoring it in place but leaving the rest of the gear wrapped, say, in its mouth, then the whale escapes but you’re “probably condemning them to death.”
“These animals don’t sit around and say, ‘Oh c’mon take this gear off me. I love you very much.’ I mean, they probably hate you as much as anything,” he said. "Any of the stuff you see, videos where the whale jumps for joy, that’s a pile of crap. It doesn’t happen. I’ve released I don’t know how many whales in 30 years. I’ve never seen one of them do anything but just try and get away from you.
“They’re just like, ‘I’m outta here.’”