It was an epic battle of endurance, patience and skill as several organizations teamed up to save an entangled humpback whale.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis whale was a handful, very mobile,\u201d said DFO Marine Mammal Coordinator Paul Cottrell who led the disentanglement. \u201cIt\u2019s always very dangerous so we took our time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Watch the report below:<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd a float of course and there was a weight and a couple of traps, so a lot of gear,\u201d Cottrell added.<\/p>\n
Cottrell\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
They put a satellite transmitter on it so finding the whale Friday morning was easy, and the work continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo 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,\u201d Cottrell explained. \u201cIt can change and you have to be careful so we made sure we were doing it with minimal impact to the animal.\u201d<\/p>\n
The whale is 4.5 years old and over 30 feet long, which was longer than the boats they used over the three days. <\/p>\n
They figured the whale became entangled up to two weeks ago and was already suffering from the ropes around it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was quite a bad entanglement so it\u2019s always a risk of eventually causing an infection and definitely the animal\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n