Marine animal rescuers on Vancouver Island are reporting a busy summer season dealing with whale entanglements. Paul Cottrell, who heads the marine mammal team at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, mentioned that they have been responding to an average of one to two entanglements weekly over the past two months. These numbers are consistent with last year’s figures, alongside several necropsies conducted.
The most recent entanglement call occurred last week, marking the third activation of Cottrell’s team in under two weeks. The distress call involved a humpback whale calf and its mother, discovered near the south coast of Vancouver Island entangled in over 100 meters of rope. The team traced the gear and determined that the calf had been dragging the rope since July 5 after going missing from B.C.’s central coast.
The team dedicated seven hours, collaborating with U.S. counterparts, to free the trapped calf. Cottrell expressed the team’s satisfaction in rescuing the calf, emphasizing the significance of each animal’s well-being.
In recent incidents, the team responded to two entanglement cases within two days. They successfully disentangled a whale named Wiggins for the second time in a year near French Creek on Vancouver Island’s eastern coast, followed by another call to the central Island and the Alberni Inlet. Cottrell highlighted the increasing frequency of such incidents, indicating a concerning trend with entanglement rates showing no signs of decline.
Jackie Hildering, a researcher at the Marine Education and Research Society (MERS), acknowledged the positive conservation efforts that have given humpback whales a “second chance” after being hunted to near extinction. However, she raised concerns about the ongoing threat to these whales due to entanglements. Hildering stressed the importance of prevention and education as more effective strategies, cautioning that the current focus on disentanglements may not address the underlying issue adequately.
She emphasized the need for public awareness and recommended taking a whale-safe boating course developed by MERS to prevent humpback entanglements and fatalities, endorsed by the federal government. Hildering’s research revealed that a significant percentage of whales she observed displayed signs of previous entanglements, suggesting a pervasive problem that requires proactive measures to safeguard these marine species.