Vol. 3, No. 3 Contents
Headline Back Issues
Summer 99
|
Chance encounter in the Bay of Fundy
The late start seemed insignificant at the time we were in no rush. Clear, sunny skies and calm seas promised perfect conditions for scouting whales along the way. On the bow, bundled against a stiff spring wind and peering out over the water was Deborah Tobin, Education and Whale Rescue Coordinator for East Coast Ecosystems (ECE). The Freeport, Nova Scotia-based research and education organization works on behalf of the endangered North Atlantic right whale. Tobin had organized Sunday's workshop, as well as one that had taken place on Friday. Also on board were several whale researchers some experienced at disentangling whales and a Toronto film crew making a documentary about whale disentanglement for Canadian Geographic. Early arrivals
And then, at noon, spooky serendipity. Making regular dives not far from our vessel was another right whale, this one harnessed in fishing gear. Rope passed through the whale's mouth, crossed over its back, and wrapped around its body binding it with a metal shaft and a large red float. Our collective adrenaline level spiked. All eyes tracked the whale as it continued to dive normally, despite the gear. Timing took on more importance now. Had we left the dock an hour earlier as planned, the entangled whale may not have crossed paths with our vessel, which was packed with whale disentanglement gear, and crawling with people who knew how to use it. The whale was younger than four years old, guesstimated New England Aquarium right whale researcher Phil Hamilton, as he hunted for data sheets to record information about the animal. He also snapped photos that would later be compared with the Aquarium's extensive right whale photo identification catalog. Making a plan
The team would have to try to cut the gear off of the whale from a motorized, inflatable raft. ECE and CCS have federal permits allowing close approaches to right whales which are otherwise prohibited for research or disentanglement purposes. The US prohibits vessels from approaching within 500 yards of a North Atlantic right whale without one of these permits. On board the Fundy Cruiser was a cache of disentanglement equipment to be used in demonstrations at Sunday's workshop. The kit was usually stored at the Canadian Coast Guard station in Westport on Brier's Island, Nova Scotia. It included floats, special cutting tools, and an inflatable raft. But a motor for the raft had been left behind, since it wasn't needed for the demonstrations. Tobin called Fundy Cruiser Captain Todd Sollows' father and brother to ask them to bring one out. She also reported the entanglement to the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and alerted Fundy Traffic, which directs the region's shipping traffic, that right whales were in the area. Meanwhile, Mayo and Lyman tied large floats to a long line with a grappling hook on the end and threw the grapple end into the tangle of gear already wrapped around the whale. The floats would create more drag in the water as the whale tried to swim, tiring the animal we hoped so the disentanglement team could work on it. We watched the whale dive and resurface, the earlier bustle ebbing to an edgy calm. Those with seaworthy stomachs munched distractedly on donuts and leftover hard-boiled eggs. Dinner on Grand Manan was going to be a bit later than planned. One vigorous whaleAt last, the Coast Guard arrived with the outboard motor, having met the Sollows part way. Mayo, Lyman, and Todd Sollows, who had attended the previous day's training workshop in Freeport, set off in the inflatable to get a closer look at the whale. Though they wore life vests and helmets to provide protection from poles and other gear, only vigilance and luck would protect them from the whale itself. According to Mayo, "If a whale slaps you with its tail, it's going to probably kill you." Now at the wheel of the Fundy Cruiser, CCS Senior Scientist and ECE Founder Moira Brown kept the vessel at a distance to avoid adding to whale's growing agitation. We squinted over the water, watching as the team maneuvered the raft and the gear around the whale. It didn't seem at all fatigued as it repeatedly lunged away from its pursuers. Finally, one of the floats attached to the whale would occasionally lie still. At last, the animal was resting. At 4:45, taking advantage of a calm moment, Mayo manipulated a long-handled cutting tool just under the water's surface, slicing through the lines binding the whale. Perched atop the Fundy Cruiser's wheelhouse with a pair of powerful binoculars, Jon Lien, a whale researcher from Newfoundland who has disentangled more than a thousand humpback whales, announced with a wide grin that the whale was free. Because of our limited visibility, the rest of us were not quite convinced until the team returned. Mayo confirmed that he had cut the rope on each side of the whale's mouth, removing the gear, but said a short piece remained stuck, like dental floss. He expected it would work its way out. "I think it's as good as we could do," he said, looking relieved, and a bit resigned as he handed up the more than 200 feet of line and other gear that had been wrapped around the whale. At the next morning's workshop, Mayo said that the whale seemed uninjured by the entanglement, but that over time, "certainly having that much gear could have done the animal in." He recalled that he once decided against attempting to remove fishing gear wrapped around a young right whale's flipper. He thought at the time that the disentanglement process would be too traumatic for the whale which, he surmised, would free itself from the apparently minor entanglement. A year later the same whale washed up on a beach, dead from a lethal infection that had developed as the animal grew and the line became more deeply embedded. Now, he said, "We try to [disentangle right whales] as often as we can get our hands on them." We didn't see the June 5 whale again after it was freed, but Hamilton later used photographs to identify it as #2753, a two-year-old female right whale, and a granddaughter of Staccato, a female that died in April as a result of a ship collision. Scars indicate that 2753 had been entangled at least one other time before we encountered her. There was no guarantee she wouldn't become entangled again, but for now, she was free to swim and feed unfettered, a possible future contributor to a precarious population. S.F. |
||||||||||
PDF Version
Bay of Fundy By the time the pancakes were eaten, the gear gathered and loaded, and everyone on board the Fundy Cruiser, we cast off at least an hour later than our planned 9:00 a.m. departure from Tiverton, Nova Scotia. About a dozen of us were making the three-hour crossing to Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick on Saturday, June 5, for a workshop the next morning on what fishermen should do when they encounter whales caught in fishing gear.
We weren't out long before a minke whale popped up off of our port side. Soon after, we spotted two endangered North Atlantic right whales, whose surprisingly early appearance in the Bay of Fundy prompted an excited scramble for binoculars, cameras, notebooks, and pens.
Charles "Stormy" Mayo, a Senior Scientist at the Provincetown, Massachusetts-based Center for Coastal Studies (CCS), and Ed Lyman, CCS Associate Scientist and Rescue Coordinator, started working out a plan to try to free the whale. Mayo, who is experienced at releasing right whales from fishing gear, said that even a 24-foot-long extension pole with a cutting tool on the end would probably not be long enough to reach the animal from the deck of the Fundy Cruiser.