(Montreal) Whale rescue teams are preparing to make another attempt to disentangle a young right whale from the St. Lawrence Estuary, as part of an operation to save one of the few hundred of their species left in the ocean.
A spokeswoman for Fisheries and Oceans Canada said the department has been working for more than two weeks to untangle the young animal, which was first spotted June 22 off the coast of New Brunswick and seen Monday off Portneuf-sur-Mer, Que.
“Despite the poor weather conditions, several attempts to disentangle the right whale have already been made and some of the rope has been removed,” Kathryn Hallett wrote in an email.
She said Tuesday that the Campobello Whale Rescue Team — a group associated with the Canadian Whale Institute and made up of scientists and former fishermen — is en route to the area and will attempt to respond in the coming days with the help of several other groups.
“All regional actors are mobilized and coordinating to be ready to intervene in the coming days if weather conditions permit,” wrote Mr.me Hallett, adding that a satellite tag was attached to the remaining ropes to allow researchers to track the animal.
The New England Aquarium said the entangled animal is believed to be a female calf, about a year and a half old, born in 2023 to a whale named “War.”
Robert Michaud, scientific director of the Group for Research and Education on Marine Mammals (GREMM), said that when it comes to the North Atlantic right whale, “every animal is very important.”
Currently, we estimate the population at 360 inhabitants. That’s the whole species, all that’s left.
Robert Michaud, scientific director of GREMM
He said the lack of females of reproductive age and the fact that those who give birth are doing so less frequently are of particular concern.
Michaud said that while entanglements are not always fatal, they have long-term consequences for the whales and are particularly dangerous for young ones, which are not as strong as their parents. He added that entangled whales may die earlier and reproduce less often.
“Their physical condition deteriorates as a result of these entanglements, because they have had to expend a lot of energy to get out of them or simply survive,” he explained.
An estimated 85 percent of right whales have been entangled in fishing gear at least once. Michaud said that includes five of the siblings of the entangled Quebec whales.
Disentangling a whale can be a dangerous operation, conducted in the open ocean with knives and grappling hooks, often in rough weather. A successful attempt, Michaud said, requires specialized teams familiar with both whale behavior and fishing gear.
But he believes the effort is worth it because right whales still have a “real chance” of survival. He added that they are long-lived, fairly resilient and that their deaths are largely due to human causes such as entanglements and boat strikes, making many deaths preventable.
Mr Michaud said conservation strategies in recent years have included reducing vessel speeds near whales, temporarily closing fishing areas and experimenting with ropeless fishing gear.
“Every whale that survives gives the population a chance to recover,” he said. “So it’s definitely worth being creative and innovative to save these animals because they can survive.”