Humpback whale lower free from netting after 4-day ordeal in Canada
It took four days, but finally a humpback whale off Canada’s Pacific Coast of Canada was cut free from tangled netting.
The 36-foot whale was covered in fishing gear after the process.
“I’ve never seen anything like it. The animal couldn’t open its mouth,” Fisheries and Oceans Canada Marine Mammal Coordinator Paul Cottrell told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. on Wednesday.
Associated Press video of the whale being rescued showed a knot of rope wrapped around the whale behind its blowhole but well before its dorsal fin. Mr. Cottrell believes the fishing gear got wrapped around the whale over the course of several months.
Mr. Cottrell’s team was doing a necropsy on a dead fin whale elsewhere in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, this month when it heard about the humpback. After cutting parts of the netting 50 times, the whale was freed.
“Our team was all there, all our equipment … so we actually went out with the satellite tag with the team and we were able to locate the whale,” Mr. Cottrell told the CBC.
Entanglement from fishing gear is a growing concern when it comes to humpbacks. Out of 67 large whale entanglements in U.S. waters in 2022, 49 involved humpback whales, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report released in January.
