Overview
- A North Atlantic right whale was seen entangled in fishing gear in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Canadian search teams are still trying to locate it with plans to remove the gear if conditions allow.
- Bad weather has repeatedly disrupted search operations and authorities say they may attach a satellite tag to the trailing gear to track the whale’s movements before attempting a disentanglement.
- In Massachusetts, the Center for Coastal Studies’ Marine Animal Entanglement Response team used a pole-mounted hook knife to cut rope from a young humpback in Stellwagen Bank and left responders confident the whale will recover.
- On Australia’s NSW south coast, teams from NPWS, Marine Rescue NSW and ORRCA removed about 46 metres of line, two buoys and roughly 13 kg of debris to free a humpback near Batemans Bay.
- Entanglement and ship strikes are the main threats to North Atlantic right whales, a species of roughly 380 animals, making rapid public reporting, trained multi-agency response and gear-prevention measures critical to survival.