With vessel strikes to right whales on the decline since numerous mitigation measures were put into place, the current number one threat to right whales is entanglement in fishing gear. The majority of the entangling fishing gear involves pot or trap gear (for bottom dwellers like lobster and crab, or certain fish species) and gillnet (for groundfish like cod and haddock, and other fish species). Nearly 83% of the North Atlantic right whale population shows evidence of having been entangled in fishing gear at least once, with 59% being entangled more than once (some whales have experienced over five entanglement events!). Entanglement impacts cover a wide range: from residual scarring only (typically minor), to moderate and severe levels, the latter of which includes individuals with attached gear that can lead to reduced health, infection, severing of body parts, starvation... along with what must be an incredible amount of suffering. Unfortunately, in recent years entanglement cases categorized as severe have become more frequent.

Right whale "Bridle" (Catalog #3311) suffered a severe entanglement during which this line sliced through and under the callosity. Despite disentanglement attempts, Bridle most likely died from causes related to his injuries. Photo: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission under NOAA Permit # 932-1905/MA 009526.

Steps have been taken to address this chronic problem, such as the creation of seasonal fishing closures, reduction of the number of vertical lines in the water and use of sinking groundline, but it's still too early to determine how these measures have helped. Researchers from the New England Aquarium (Amy Knowlton, Scott Kraus, Tim Werner) and Center for Coastal Studies (Jooke Robbins, Scott Landry), and rope engineer Henry McKenna turned to examining the ropes recovered from disentangled whales or from those found dead and entangled to see if trends would emerge to shape the story of why these entanglements have increased. That's right- the National Marine Fisheries Service maintains a storage facility that houses the ropes pulled off of entangled whales! This is just one of the reasons why disentanglement by professional teams is so important- they know they need to recover the gear to help advance our knowledge and understanding of the entanglement issue.

"Ruffian" (Catalog #3530), photographed with numerous raw wounds all over his body after a severe entanglement. Photo: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, taken under NOAA Permit #932-1489-09.

Amy Knowlton and her colleagues took these recovered ropes (132 different ropes from 70 entanglements of humpback, right, fin and minke whales) and analyzed them to determine polymer type, diameter, and breaking strength. They then combined this information with whatever was known about the individual whales with regards to entanglement configuration, severity of the injury, and life history to get a bigger picture of what is going on. Their newly published paper "Effects of fishing rope strength on the severity of large whale entanglements" thoroughly explains all of this (and includes a download of supporting information such as an example of a case study and how these ropes were analyzed), but in a nutshell here's what they found:

• Injury severity has increased over the years, and is related to rope strength.
• Weaker species (e.g.: minke) and younger whales are less likely to successfully break free of stronger rope, resulting in complex and potentially lethal entanglements.
• Reduced breaking strength rope (breaks at 1700 pounds or 7.56 kN) could reduce the probability of mortality by 72%.
• Forces applied during normal fishing operations in many areas are lower than 1700 lbs, so presently used fishing line is stronger than what the majority of fisheries need.

The tight line on this whale (Catalog #3279) cuts through the blowholes and into the head, while likely also wrapping through the mouth as the line is seen exiting the top of the lip. The whale's ability to breathe was clearly inhibited. Photo: Canadian Whale Institute/ New England Aquarium.

After a two-day Shelburne respite from the open ocean, we ventured back out onto Roseway Basin on September 12th.  We surveyed the eastern side and it was very gray and overcast the whole day, without much to see.  Then, on the final watch of the day, Moe and Marianna spotted a whale blow and a shallow fluking dive: our first right whale on Roseway Basin this season!  It was a pretty big deal on the boat and immediately lifted the mood. Unfortunately the sun was setting when we first found the whale, so we lost daylight very quickly and eventually had to let the whale go without having shot the perfect photo series.  The important thing is that we were later able to identify the whale as Catalog #2350, an at least 24 year-old male last sighted in Cape Cod Bay in 2013.

Our very first right whale on Roseway Basin: #2350.  Photo credit: Kelsey Howe

Encouraged by our small victory, the following day found us starting in the same place where we left off the previous night, in hopes that our single sighting was not a fluke (no pun intended) and that more whales might be in the vicinity. And FINALLY some good luck kicked in and we found right whales almost immediately.  Our first right whale of the day was identified on the spot by Marianna as Catalog #2201, a 23 year-old male, who we documented last year in August in the Bay of Fundy (BOF). This whale is the last known calf of Fermata, #1001, the very first North Atlantic right whale to be cataloged. Fermata was last seen in BOF in 1992 with her fifth calf (#2201).  A week later, #2201 was seen without his mom, and sadly she has not been seen since.

The right flank scar helped identify this whale as #2201.  Photo credit: Marianna Hagbloom

As we were working Catalog #2201, we saw multiple blows and right whale flukes nearby. Unfortunately, squalls were lining up on the horizon and our sea state dipped from manageable to sloppy. But after a slow season hampered by bad weather, we were not going to be distracted or intimidated from doing what we came there to do. We briefly photographed #3191 (a male at least 15 years of age) before another whale popped up with a severe fluke injury.

The horrifying remnants of this whale's fluke.  Photo credit: Hilary Moors-Murphy

It was right around this time that the first rain storm hit. But now, with only two photos of a probably lethally wounded whale, we would not be deterred! The key is to stick the camera inside your float coat to stay dry and then whip it out just in time to photograph a surfacing whale. Yet no matter how hard we tried, we ended up losing the injured whale in the rain. We hope that we'll be able to identify this individual based on small scars on the peduncle, and that this whale is seen again so that the injury and body condition of the animal can be better documented.

The squall passed soon enough and there were other whales in the area to photograph: Catalog #2018 (Dalmation), #3701 (Eros), #2790, and #3934.  Dalmation, named for the white spots on his lower jaw, is a 25 year-old male seen earlier this year off southern New England.  Eros, an 8 year-old male, seen last year out on Roseway Basin, is named after the mythological son of the Greek goddess Aphrodite, the namesake of his mother #1701.

Eros surfacing close to the boat.  Photo credit: Kelsey Howe

Catalog #2790 is a calving female at least 18 years old, who was last seen in the southeast with a calf this past winter. It was slightly unsettling for us to not see or photograph her calf (since most calves are not fully weaned by this time), but it should be taken into account that our sighting of her was less than one minute long and the weather conditions were poor.

Recent mother, #2790, seen briefly for a single surfacing.  Photo credit: Hilary Moors-Murphy

Catalog #3934, a 6 year-old female, is the eighth of nine calves born to #1334. Her mother has a very interesting sighting history: with the exception of three sightings, #1334 only frequents the southeast calving grounds every few years when she gives birth to a calf.  This sighting history implies that she must go somewhere other than the Gulf of Maine region to feed.  However, it is interesting to note that her daughter has a more robust sighting history, including a handful of sightings in Cape Cod Bay and Roseway Basin.

#3934 raising her flukes high for a dive.  Photo credit: Kelsey Howe

All in all, we photographed a total of eight individual right whales that morning amidst several rain squalls and a rough sea state, but we all agreed that there were a couple more whales in the area that remained unphotographed.

Later on in the afternoon, we had two more right whales, both old males and familiar faces to this project. Catalog #1306 (Velcro) is an at least 32 year-old male with an extensive Bay of Fundy sighting history, and #1327 (Scoop) is an older male (at least 33 years old) seen last year in BOF.

Scoop (top) and Velcro photographed together.  Photo credit: Jen Gatzke

Scoop, lifting his ventral, left fluke lobe. The blunt, white fluke tip is a matchable feature. Photo credit: Kelsey Howe

As we were photographing these two whales, the fog rolled in. However, after reviewing photos inside the wheelhouse of the Shelagh, we noticed a small green line exiting the left side of Velcro's mouth. Fishing entanglements can be very serious and greatly impact the health and longevity of a whale, so we immediately went back to our previous position to try to relocate him for better documentation.

Notice the small green line exiting the left side of Velcro's mouth.  Photo credit: Jen Gatzke

Unfortunately, while the Shelagh is equipped with disentanglement gear, we learned from a disentanglement attempt back in 2013 that she is not the best platform to work from--she is too large and slow. Our colleagues up and down the East Coast usually use a small inflatable boat for this sort of work, so the most we could do in this situation was get more photos and video of the entanglement (similar to our documentation of an entangled right whale in 2014), especially since it was not a previously known entanglement case. Luckily, as we made our way back to where we had last seen the pair, one of them breached in the fog.

Either Scoop or Velcro breaching in the fog. Photo credit: Kelsey Howe

We attempted to better photo-document Velcro, but it was not long before the fog became too thick and unworkable. We had to call it a day and head for land, where we would spend the next two days at Cape Sable Island waiting for storms to pass.

We were so excited to finally be able to work whales and do what we had come all this way to do. There IS life on Roseway Basin and right whales still use this habitat, which is very gratifying and comforting. In total, we photographed 11 individual right whales in this two-day period, many of which were interesting and/or troubling sightings. It is never fun to find an entangled or wounded whale, but it is very important to document them because they exist out there, whether or not we know about it. The more we know, the better we can attempt to help and prevent these occurrences...or at least, that is the goal. And that is why we sometimes photograph through rainstorms.

-Kelsey

As the end of October approaches, many cultures around the world will be honoring their dead during observances like Allhallowtide and Dia de los Muertos. Although the North Atlantic right whale population offers us a large pool of deceased individuals to remember, this year we have reason to celebrate the opposite: Catalog #4160, who was thought likely dead, is indeed alive! *cue spooky music* Let me explain:

December 2010: Sea To Shore's aerial survey team discovers Gannet (#2660) with a new calf (#4160) off the coast of Georgia. About a month later, the healthy pair is seen by the Florida Fish & Wildlife aerial survey team- Gannet nurses her son and he grows larger.


April 2011: Gannet and her calf have migrated safely from the Southeast all the way to Cape Cod Bay, where they are seen together by the Center for Coastal Studies.

July 2011: The calf is seen in Cape Cod Bay again, but this time Gannet is nowhere to be found. A calf alone at seven months old does not bode well, as calves will often nurse for up to one year before weaning. The outlook for this young whale is made much worse by the fact that #4160 now has numerous large wounds from an entanglement in fishing gear. The entanglement event is a possible cause for the separation of Gannet and her son. This is the last sighting of #4160, and his survival seems unlikely.


September 2011: Gannet is sighted in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and in the Bay of Fundy during this month. She has not reunited with her calf. Gannet bears large entanglement wounds, new since the April sighting- it's possible that mom and calf experienced their entanglements at the same time. This is the last sighting of Gannet.


Fast forward to August 2014: The Shelagh crew patiently tracks a whale that is traveling subsurface on Roseway Basin. After several attempts, photographs are finally collected before the whale disappears on another 18 minute dive. It's noted that the individual has entanglement scars and looks young.


It wouldn't be until we were back in the office that we would have time to work on figuring out who that young individual was- matching is tricky work when the last photos you have are of a calf from three years ago! But the callosity pattern was there, the right lip ridges matched, the entanglement wounds had healed but the scars lined up- we had seen #4160!




Though he isn't the healthiest looking animal, the fact that #4160 is alive amazes us! He represents a flicker of light during these past few months of darkness. Over the past six months three new entangled whale cases were discovered (with 12 cases currently open), and since July, four dead right whales have been found; while cause of death is unknown for two of the whales, the bodies of the other two were wrapped in fishing gear.

Gannet still has not been seen since September 2011, but now that we know #4160 is still kicking we are more optimistic that she may prove herself to really have nine lives (based on scarring history, we know that Gannet has been entangled at least four times). For now, we are content to focus on the fact that #4160 is alive- and there wasn't even a Dr. Frankenstein or a spell for resurrection involved (that we know of, anyway!).

-Marianna

As the Shelagh was returning to home port from our second Roseway Basin voyage, we sighted a right whale in the Bay of Fundy. Even from a distance, we could tell that the blowholes had been injured at some point because the post-blowhole callosity and surrounding area was overwhelmed with cyamids, and the whale was not creating the signature V-shape blow when it exhaled. As soon as we got a closer look, we saw green line tightly crossing the head, similar to the entangled whale #4001 that the Nereid team found on September 5- but unfortunately, these individuals were not the same whale. This whale has been identified as Catalog #3279, a 12 year-old male.



Our team could not attempt to disentangle him, and it was too late in the day to dispatch the Campobello Whale Rescue Team. Though we ached to do more for this whale, the best we could do was document the case as thoroughly as possible.



This is a terrible type of entanglement and we are eager to survey the Bay in the hopes of relocating #3279, but the weather has been uncooperative thus far. So we wait on land, frustrated at the weather and frustrated that yet another individual has to suffer the same fate as 83% of the right whale population.

-Marianna

On September 5th, the Nereid crew sighted an entangled 4 year old male, #4001, 2010 calf of Aphrodite, #1701. This animal had a single wrap of heavy rope over the top of the head and through the mouth. No trailing gear was detected (although the higher sea state precluded a careful look) and it is not known if the flippers are also entangled.

The Campobello Whale Rescue Team was notified and came out to the location but despite a lot of searching, relocation of this animal after it dove proved challenging - all the animals seen that day were on long dives and travelling far distances. Therefore, no disentanglement efforts were carried out. And this animal has not been seen since despite a lot of survey effort in the Bay.

#4001 sighted entangled in the Bay of Fundy

We are concerned about the fate of this animal as at only 4 years old, he is still growing and the line could become embedded and potentially lethal, a pattern we have seen with other right whales with rostrum wraps. To top off this unfortunate news, we learned that on September 4th, a Canadian patrol aircraft sighted a dead, entangled right whale south of Newfoundland well offshore and unable to be retrieved. The carcass was fairly decomposed and will probably not be able to be matched to the catalog.


Both of these events highlight the fact that entanglements are now the biggest concern for this small population (vessel strikes have been much reduced due to effective regulations - see paper link below). These two entanglement cases are the tip of the iceberg for this species - we know that 83% of the population has evidence of entanglement interaction based on scars and many of these animals have been entangled more than once (two animals as many as seven times!). We also know that injuries have become more severe in recent years perhaps a result of changes in fishing distribution and an increase in rope strength. There are likely many more right whales dying from entanglement than are documented and these events occur all along the eastern seaboard where ever fixed fishing gear occurs. There clearly is much more work to be done to better understand and find ways to mitigate entanglements to help this species endure.

To read more about entanglements and vessel strikes, here are two papers that NEAq team members have been involved in:

Entanglements
http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v466/p293-302/

Ship strikes
http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/esr/v23/n2/p133-147/

I have thought often about what it might be like to be a right whale, but of course I only have my human senses to compare it to. From my perspective, I think about what it might be to spend life mostly in the dark (at night or at depth), having to find enough of the rice-sized copepod plankton to feed a hungry belly, finding a mate that can't be seen, and keeping a one ton newborn calf well-fed and safe.



Clearly right whales are well-adapted to manage all of the above, but what concerns me most are the things they are not adapted to: the chronic noise pollution from the extensive vessel traffic that transits day and night throughout their range which masks their vocalizations and limits their ability to find each other; the fear that must be palpable when one of those vessels gets louder and louder as it unknowingly steams towards them but can't be seen—which way to turn to escape the deadly hull and propeller?; and the panic that must set in when, while searching for food at depth with a mouth wide open, an unseen rope attaching a buoy at the surface to fishing gear at depth becomes caught in the long baleen plates hanging from the roof of the mouth, causing a frantic struggle to get to the surface to breath and to hopefully escape from the heavy gear and constricting ropes.


This latter scenario of entanglement is the focus of a recently published paper by myself and colleagues here at the New England Aquarium. In this paper we reviewed up to 30 years (1980-2009) of photographs for each individual right whale, looked for evidence of entanglement related scarring on all different areas of the body, and noted which animals were witnessed carrying rope likely to be from fishing gear. We determined that 83% of this small population has evidence of at least one entanglement interaction, with some animals experiencing as many as seven entanglement events.

Due to dedicated survey efforts, many whales are sighted and well-photographed from one year to the next, making it possible to notice when new scars appear in a relatively small time frame. Using this well-documented part of the population, we determined that annually, on average, 26% of these animals had obtained new entanglement scars or were carrying gear.

A total of 1,032 unique interactions were documented, resulting in minor to moderate scarring for many right whales, but serious and often fatal entanglements for 86 individuals. And the rate of serious entanglements has increased over the 30 year period.

The entanglement issue remains the most serious conservation concern facing this small population. Expanded fishing effort along the eastern seaboard over the past several decades and the use of stronger ropes and heavier gear is just one more insult we have imposed in the oceanic realm, where it can be all too easy to ignore the impacts. Right whales are in a very real sense a "canary in the coal mine" for understanding what is happening offshore. And we will continue our efforts to work with government and industry to try to find solutions to this complex issue.

If you are interested in reading the recently published paper for more details, it is available for free at the Marine Ecology Progress Series journal.

– Amy Knowlton