Marine animal rescuers on Vancouver Island are reporting a surge in whale entanglements this summer. Paul Cottrell, who serves as the marine mammal coordinator at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, stated that his team has been attending to an average of one to two entanglements per week over the past two months. This frequency is consistent with the figures from the previous year, along with conducting several necropsies.
In the most recent incident last week, the team responded to their third call in less than two weeks. The distress call involved a humpback whale calf and its mother, entangled in over 100 meters of rope near the south coast of Vancouver Island. The team traced the gear and discovered that the calf had been ensnared since July 5, when it was reported missing from the central coast of British Columbia.
After a seven-hour effort, working in collaboration with U.S. counterparts, the team successfully freed the calf, which was a significant accomplishment as every animal’s rescue holds immense value, according to Cottrell. Preceding this, the team had handled two entanglement cases within two days. They had disentangled a whale named Wiggins for the second time in a year near French Creek on the island’s eastern coast before swiftly responding to another entanglement call at the central Island and the Alberni Inlet.
Cottrell expressed concern over the increasing frequency of entanglements, noting a lack of decline in entanglement rates despite the positive resurgence of humpback populations in British Columbia’s inshore waters. Jackie Hildering, a researcher and educator at the Marine Education and Research Society (MERS), attributed the humpback whale recovery to enhanced conservation efforts, highlighting their past brush with extinction due to hunting.
However, Hildering cautioned that the current entanglement scenario might jeopardize this progress, citing that 50% of the whales she observed showed signs of previous entanglements, potentially underrepresenting the true extent of the issue. She emphasized the importance of prevention and education in mitigating entanglements, underscoring the need for long-term solutions beyond headline-grabbing rescue missions.
Hildering advocated for proactive measures such as educating individuals on preventing humpback entanglements and fatalities. She promoted MERS’ whale-safe boating course, endorsed by the federal government, as a valuable resource for those navigating waters where whales frequent.
