Fisheries and Oceans Canada crews quickly got to work after receiving a report of a humpback whale entangled in fishing gear near Texada Island.<\/p>\n
The five-year-old humpback whale Tutu was seen entangled off Texada Island on Sept. 4, and fishery officers from Campbell River were deployed.<\/p>\n
The crews first attached a satellite tag on the gear, then after eight hours, they were able to remove over 300 feet of fishing line.<\/p>\n
Friday afternoon, MERS (the Marine Education & Research Society) posted on its Facebook page \u201cWhale is now directly in McNeill Bay near the ferry dock. The 4 orange floats you are seeing have been attached to the gear the whale is entangled in to slow down\/exhaust the whale so that the team can approach and cut free the gear.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier on Friday the DFO issued a statement, \u201cIn dark and windy weather the team attached a satellite tag to the remaining gear,\u201d DFO said in a statement on Friday. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey will remove the remaining gear today.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has been a big effort by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) marine mammal rescue, Campbell River fishery officers and Straitwatch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Comox Valley Wildlife Sightings says one of its community members reported the entangled whale to DFO.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only do our CVWS chats provide opportunities for our page followers to see these amazing beings from land-based viewing locations, but we are also watching over them,\u201d CVWS said in a Facebook post on Sept. 4.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday one of our amazing chat members has reported a possible humpback entanglement using the pinned dfo contact info provided in all our chats.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2024, another humpback whale named Smoke was freed from fishing gear. At the time, Paul Cottrell, marine mammal coordinator with DFO, said removing fishing gear is a complex task.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it\u2019s a real difficult, difficult situation when you have an entangled 30 tonne humpback or any large whale to try to get in and remove gear from, you have to be very patient,\u201d Cottrell said in July 2024. \u201cAnd that\u2019s why it often takes, over five, over six, over 10 hours, to be able to start and then end, to remove the gear.\u201d<\/p>\n
If the whale is awake, Cottrell said there are a number of cues to watch out for in order to ensure the safety of the team and whale.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou actually go by behavioural cues. So if it trumpets, wheezing, high-pitched, you know that animal is agitated, it\u2019s going to react,\u201d Cottrell said at the time. \u201cSo through experience, you monitor the behaviour as you\u2019re working with the animal, and you have to be able to disengage at any time, and we did that a number of times with this animal.\u201d<\/p>\n
READ PREVIOUS: \u2018We removed over 100 feet of line\u2019: Crews disentangle whale from fishing gear near Comox<\/a><\/p>\n On Friday, DFO says that debris in the ocean is a big problem for marine life.<\/p>\n \u201cThe public can help prevent entanglements by cutting packing material, banding, rope and other looped material before disposing of it, and by not disposing of these materials in the marine environment,\u201d DFO says.<\/p>\n If you see a possible occurrence of a whale being harassed or disturbed, or instance or collisions with whales or entanglements, DFO asks that you contact the Fisheries and Ocean\u2019s Observe, Record, Report\/Marine Mammal Incident Hotline at 1-800-465-4336 or by email at:\u00a0DFO.ORR-ONS.MPO@dfo-mpo.gc.ca<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fisheries and Oceans Canada crews quickly got to work after receiving a report of a humpback whale entangled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-123329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}