The search to find the young whale entangled in a fishing cable was suspended due to unfavorable weather on Friday.
Posted at 4:18 p.m.
The calf was last seen with its mother on Wednesday while swimming in the Rimouski area, near Bic National Park. The mammal, which would only be a few months old, was seen for the first time in the Saguenay–St. Lawrence Marine Park, off Les Escoumins, about forty kilometers from Tadoussac. He was swimming with his mother with a yellow rope passing over his back, below his pectoral fin. The rope enters its mouth on the left side, specifies the Quebec Marine Mammal Emergency Response Network (RQUMM).
The president and scientific director of the Group for Research and Education on Marine Mammals (GREMM), Robert Michaud, indicated by email to The Press that “the search had been fruitless today [vendredi] and that due to “unfavorable weather, we are stopping the search for the moment”.
Mr. Michaud said he hoped for a new report of the whale and finally to consider a “disentanglement” operation.
Two teams from Fisheries and Oceans Canada and a vessel from the Campobello Whale Rescue Team participated in the search on Friday.
The calf was identified as the calf of a humpback whale named H729, which had been seen several times in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and in the estuary in recent years.
Remember that an adult humpback whale can measure 13 to 17 meters and weigh 30 to 40 tons. It can live up to 80 years. The species has not been considered threatened in Canada since the early 2000s.