A rescue team is being deployed to disentangle a one-and-a-half-year-old female right whale that’s been stuck in fishing gear for weeks.
The whale, believed to be one of the calves of a 35-year-old female named War (ID number 1812), was first observed on June 22 off the coast of of New Brunswick.
The calf is now in the St. Lawrence Estuary near Portneuf-sur-Mer, Que., about 300 kilometres north of Quebec City.
Back in June, it was already entangled in fishing gear. During multiple attempts to cut it free of its ropes, a tag was attached to track the movement of the whale, which can travel great distances even while under stress.
According to Quebec’s marine mammal emergency response team, Réseau québécois d’urgences pour les mammifères marins, the whale is still dragging several metres of rope around its pectoral fins and in its mouth.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) is co-ordinating a follow-up operation to help the whale and a team from the Campobello Whale Rescue Team (CWRT) will attempt the disentanglement.
Calf at risk of starvation
According to observation reports from DFO air crews on July 8, the animal is swimming at a good pace and moving along the surface of the water.
“The faster we can free this animal, the better are the chances,” said Robert Michaud, co-ordinator for the Réseau québécois d’urgences pour les mammifères marins.
“It’s a complex case.… It often takes several attempts and it is very important for the survival of this animal that we are able to withdraw everything.”
He says the weather is also not on their side, with the team facing foggy conditions as they catch up to the calf.
Composed of former fishermen and experts, Michaud says there are only two fully trained teams doing these rescues in the eastern part of Canada.
He says there’s been a growing number of entanglements and collisions in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, even referring to the mammals as a kind of “climate change refugee.”
“They used to be in large concentration in the Atlantic, and in the 2010s and on they moved inside the Gulf of Saint Lawrence,” said Michaud.
Seeing how many calves don’t make it past one or two years is heartbreaking, says Geneviève Peck, a master’s student at the Marine Institute of the Memorial University of Newfoundland, who evaluates the suitability of different types of fishing gear for fisheries.
Having studied the North Atlantic right whale for the past couple years, she says the slow-moving animals tend to prefer staying in coastal waters where copepods — a type of crustacean — are abundant.
These warm, shallow waters are also where most of the fisheries tend to take place, she says.
“Snow crab and lobster gear are the most common types of gear that you find these whales entangled in,” said Peck.
“Most of the entanglements happen around the head and the mouth. So if the whale isn’t able to feed, it will just die very slowly. And that’s another heartbreaking issue.”
She says it can sometimes take whales six months to a year to die from an entanglement, which can also cause serious lesions.
“It’s a really slow and painful death,” said Peck.
Transport Canada is asking all vessels in the area to voluntarily reduce speed and not to exceed a maximum speed of 10.0 knots.
The Réseau québécois d’urgences pour les mammifères marins asks the public to respect a 400-metre distance with at-risk species.