It was an epic battle of endurance, patience and skill as several organizations teamed up to save an entangled humpback whale.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans Marine Mammal Rescue team from the Lower Mainland was joined by fisheries officers from Campbell River and NGO Straitwatch in the rescue that happened over three days from Texada Island to Port McNeill.
“This whale was a handful, very mobile,” said DFO Marine Mammal Coordinator Paul Cottrell who led the disentanglement. “It’s always very dangerous so we took our time.”
Watch the report below:
It all unfolded Thursday when an off-duty member of the Canadian Coast Guard was sailing near Texada Island and spotted the whale with 450 feet of recreational prawning gear trailing it.
“And a float of course and there was a weight and a couple of traps, so a lot of gear,” Cottrell added.
Cottrell’s team was mobilized from the Lower Mainland but by then, the whale named Tutu had already moved closer to Comox before it headed northbound toward Campbell River.
“I mean, we worked with this animal throughout Thursday all the way up to almost Kelsey Bay. It became dark and we took quite a bit of gear off,” he said.
They put a satellite transmitter on it so finding the whale Friday morning was easy, and the work continued.
“So we work up the line, cut up as much as we could trying to look at the gear configuration and how it changes over a disentanglement,” Cottrell explained. “It can change and you have to be careful so we made sure we were doing it with minimal impact to the animal.”
The whale is 4.5 years old and over 30 feet long, which was longer than the boats they used over the three days.
They figured the whale became entangled up to two weeks ago and was already suffering from the ropes around it.
“This was quite a bad entanglement so it’s always a risk of eventually causing an infection and definitely the animal’s ability to forage would have been restricted considerably so the impact on the animal over time, depending how long it was on, could have killed it.”
The Marine Education and Research Society in Port McNeill says people are misinformed if they think all entangled whales are saved.
“There is so much misinformation around entanglement of whales. It’s such a significant concern on our coast with our research supporting that half the humpbacks have scarring from entanglement. How many are dead at the bottom of the ocean? We don’t know,” MERS co-founder Jackie Hildering told CHEK News.
Tutu had moved all the way up to Port McNeill when the rescue wrapped up Friday night. By Saturday morning the whale had freed itself of the remaining ropes.
“Oh it’s unbelievable and you know, three days of solid work, it was awesome,” Cottrell said.