Rescuers Race to Free Entangled North Atlantic Right Whale

Since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) began documenting an Unusual Mortality Event (UME) for North Atlantic right whales in 2017, 36 of the endangered species are known to have died. Researchers are hoping an entangled female whale swimming in Cape Cod Bay won’t be one of them. 

Along with vessel strikes, fishing gear entanglements are the greatest threat faced by these struggling whales. This particular whale, dubbed #4545, was first spotted snared in fishing gear off Nantucket in February, but rescuers could not reach her because she was too far away and the light was too dim, the Center for Coastal Studies noted in a press release. 

“Since it was first observed in February, the entanglement has developed into a highly complex and lethal one, with multiple wraps around the whale’s body and likely also her flippers,” the center wrote in a Facebook post. 

The Center for Coastal Studies Marine Animal Entanglement Response (MAER) attempted to free her on March 29. They succeeded in removing 200 feet of thick rope and attaching a small telemetry buoy to make it easier to find and free her later. 

“[T]his is obviously a difficult situation. We worked very hard for this whale on Wednesday and she did all she could to avoid us,” MAER Director Scott Landry said in the press release. “With the telemetry buoy in place on her entanglement all of our attention will be focused on trying again.”

The eight-year-old female is an exemplar of the dangers faced by her species. There are fewer than 350 of the whales left, and they are dying faster than they are being born, according to NOAA. What’s more, only around 70 breeding females are left alive. There is evidence that the climate crisis is partly driving their decline, since a shift in ideal feeding conditions both deprived them of food and put them in the way of busier, less protected waters to search for it.

That’s why researchers are hoping for good weather this week to be able to save at least one of them. 

“This will not be like veterinary surgery,” Landry told WBUR. “So we need really good conditions to go for targets that are very, very small, and very defensible by the whale.”

The would-be rescuers don’t have much time, New England Aquarium senior scientist Amy Knowlton told WBZ News.

“It’s not a good situation for sure,” Knowlton said. “I think this whale does not have a lot of time. It’s been an escalating problem because the industry has been expanding over the decades and ropes have gotten stronger.”

The New England Aquarium says that more than 85 percent of North Atlantic right whales will tangle with fishing gear at least once in their lives. Since 2017, entanglements have led to nine known deaths, 30 serious injuries and 21 sublethal industries, though only around a third of fatalities are ever documented.

“Whales can pick up gear from anywhere within their range and drag it around for weeks and months,” Landry said in the press release. “Their range is huge, stretching from Canada to Florida. Using disentanglement as a tool for conservation is helpful but has its limitations. We have no control over when or where an entangled whale will be discovered.” 

Attempts to address the issue through regulations have run aground on politics, as GPB reported in March. A federal judge ruled in 2022 that existing gear regulations did not go far enough to protect the whales, but lawmakers from Maine — where fishing is both economically and culturally important — were able to push the deadline for new regulations back from 2024 to 2028. 

“With that effectively suspended to 2028, I feel that the danger to outright extinction of the right whale is increasing significantly,” Ranking Member of the House Natural Resources Committee and Arizona Democrat Raúl Grijalva told States Newsroom, as GPB reported.