Onboard a dangerous mission to disentangle a 60-tonne right whale

Graham Duggan · CBC Docs

· Posted: Jan 05, 2023 10:45 AM EST | Last Updated: January 6, 2023

How bash you prevention a whale that's 15 metres agelong and thrashing astir successful distress? 

Every summer, North Atlantic close whales migrate up the eastbound seashore of North America wherever they look an onslaught of threats. They get struck by ships, look nutrient shortages and — each excessively often — go entangled successful sportfishing cogwheel and ropes. 

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that determination are presently less than 350 North Atlantic close whales, with little than 100 breeding females successful that population. Over the past decade, the whales person experienced antithetic mortality levels. Since 2017, the medication reports, 20 per cent of the colonisation has been recovered dead, injured oregon ill.

When the whales instrumentality northbound to the waters astir the Bay of Fundy, Gulf of St. Lawrence and the New England coast, teams of rescuers from a web of agencies are connected call, acceptable to assistance entangled whales. 

But freeing a 60-tonne behemoth from ropes tin beryllium tricky — and precise dangerous. 

"Right whales are flexible capable that they tin really interaction the extremity of their nose, their rostrum, with their tail," says Scott Landry, manager of the Marine Animal Entanglement Response Program astatine the Center for Coastal Studies successful Provincetown, Mass. "So if you're anyplace adjacent the caput of a close whale, that is an highly unsafe spot to be." 

Landry and different close whale rescuers are featured successful Last of the Right Whales, a documentary from The Nature of Things, alongside the national scientists, fishers and researchers who are doing everything they tin to prevention the species. 

'The existent culprit is rope'

In 2017, Joe Howlett, a unpaid whale rescuer who co-founded the Campobello Whale Rescue Team, was killed erstwhile an entangled whale flicked its tail, hitting Howlett with astir a tonne of force.

That summer, 7 close whales were recovered entangled successful the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Two of them died. 

When the rescue squad locates an entangled whale, they leap into action. They request to get arsenic adjacent to the whale arsenic imaginable portion maintaining information for the unit connected board. 

The teams usage an aged whaling strategy called "kegging": attaching a floating buoy to the trailing enactment truthful the whale can't dive and escape.

"The existent culprit is rope," says Landry successful the documentary. "It is enactment successful the places wherever these animals person to live." 

Many blasted the snowfall crab fishery for the problem. "When they find a whale entangled successful the cogwheel … and it's successful the snowfall crab gear, they say, 'Well, it's the snowfall crab's fault,'" says Martin Noël, a crab fisher. "It's hard to accidental it's not erstwhile you spot a buoy that comes from a crab pot."

Noël is investigating retired new, innovative ropeless methods for crab fishing. Though determination whitethorn beryllium a fewer kinks to enactment out, the promising exertion could trim the magnitude of sportfishing cogwheel successful the close whales' habitat. 

"Any measurement that would trim the magnitude of enactment would payment whales," says Landry, adding, "I'm talking astir reducing rope, not reducing fishing."

The extremity of the decline?

Between 2017 and 2019, 21 close whales died successful the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Now, whenever whales are detected successful the region, Fisheries and Oceans Canada imposes strict impermanent oregon season-long sportfishing country closures, making definite non-tended fixed cogwheel is removed from the water. 

These closures, conservation groups and scientists say, are reducing the hazard of entanglements.

But portion nary whale deaths person been recorded successful Canadian waters since 2019, the colonisation was inactive successful diminution successful 2021. 

According to Heather Pettis, a researcher with the New England Aquarium and enforcement manager of the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium, lone one-third of whale deaths are ever seen. 

"We haven't detected any. That doesn't mean that determination person been zero mortalities," she told the CBC. "We besides cognize that determination person been respective entanglements of whales."

But Pettis is hopeful: "It looks similar the decline, the downward trend, is benignant of softening a bit."

Watch Last of the Right Whales connected The Nature of Things.