A team from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources was documenting the second North Atlantic right whale calf of the season about four miles offshore of the Florida/Georgia border on Wednesday when they received an urgent message.
“We had just started a biopsy,” Jessica Thompson, senior wildlife biologist, told The Current GA. “We were literally recovering the bolt (of tissue sample) that was floating in the water when the call came in on the radio about the entanglement a number of miles off the north end of Cumberland. So we just pivoted and started heading that way.”
An aerial survey team out of Florida had spotted the distressed whale while conducting the first field day of this right whale calving season, which runs from December through March. With fewer than 400 individuals in the population, these highly endangered large whales are closely monitored, especially in their calving grounds off South Carolina, Georgia and northeast Florida.
The Georgia team along with partners from other state, federal and private agencies — including two aerial survey teams working from above — would spend the next two days tracking the whale and working to remove the commercial fishing gear wrapped around its bus-sized body.
Day one
Thompson and her team — senior wildlife biologist Mark Dodd and wildlife technician Trip Kolkmeyer — immediately navigated their 26-foot rigid inflatable boat, the RV Timucua, to the entangled whale, a four-year-old male nicknamed Division. Born to Silt, he was previously known only as number 5217 in the North Atlantic right whale catalog. He’s named for the markings on his head that resemble the mathematical symbol. Right whales reach maturity around 10 years, so Division, while considerably longer than the Timucua, is still a juvenile.
The most recent sighting of Division before Wednesday was in the Gulf of St. Lawrence by Fisheries and Oceans Canada on July 5, with no gear attached. Right whales spend the summer months feeding off New England and Canada, then the pregnant females head south to give birth in Southeast waters. Juveniles sometimes make the migration, too.
Using photographs transmitted from the aerial surveyors, teams on the ground and on the water assessed Division’s predicament. The Center for Coastal Studies based in Massachusetts coordinates the action through its Marine Animal Entanglement Response program. Like physicians, the wildlife biologists are committed to “first, do no harm.”
They determined that attaching a satellite tag to Division was the first course of action for the day. It wouldn’t increase the risk to the whale but would allow the researchers to find him easily the next day.
Once a support vessel joined Thompson and her crew on scene with the whale, the Georgia team attached the satellite tag they keep at the ready, securing it to the rope as thick as a garden hose trailing far behind Division, managing to also remove about 10-20 meters of the rope.
Entanglement in fishing gear is one of the greatest threats to North Atlantic right whales. NOAA Fisheries estimates that over 85 percent of right whales have been entangled in fishing gear at least once. Heavy rope on its own or weighed down by other gear can cut into a whale’s skin, causing serious injuries and infections, sometimes leading to death. Even if gear is shed or removed through disentanglement efforts, the time spent entangled can severely stress a whale, weaken it, prevent it from feeding, and sap the energy it needs to swim, feed, and reproduce.
That retrieved rope is important evidence, said Thompson, who manages the DNR’s marine mammal program.
“Retrieving the gear is the most crucial part, because that gets to the true root cause of what is going on and understanding how we can improve,” Thompson said. “We work with our colleagues in the Northeast to improve fisheries management and help support some other dynamic management options. It’s those things that can really help change the future of entanglements with whales rather than just one piece at a time.”
Photos of the entanglement showed that a cut on the rope coming down the left side of the head would release tension and possibly free the animal of some gear.
“We did attempt cutting on the first day in powered approaches, but did not have any success,” Thompson said.
Day two
At daylight Thursday on teams were back out, this time with four boats. In addition to the Timucua and DNR’s “combat” inflatable, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission sent its rigid inflatable and NOAA sent the 51-foot R/V Gannet. The satellite tracker showed Division had swum north overnight and was now off Jekyll Island. An aerial team got a visual, confirming the location.
The boats rendezvoused with Division by late morning.
The interagency team first approached the whale from behind, getting as close as possible with the motor, then cutting the power and pulling themselves toward the animal with the trailing rope. It’s a technique borrowed from whalers, who named these animals right whales because their tendency to swim near shore and float when killed made them the “right” whale to hunt. The rescuers’ aim: get close enough to use a cutting tool on the end of a 30-foot carbon fiber pole to free the most consequential rope on the whale’s left side.
They got close, but then Division had enough.
“The whale started not behaving predictably, and it became unsafe to continue that technique.”
The team they tried what Thompson called “true kegging,” also taken from whalers’ playbook — attaching floats and a sea anchor to the whale to slow it down.
The young whale balked at the added drag and reacted “powerfully,” with headstands, lunges and half breaches. As it did so, researchers in the air photographed its belly and could see for the first time that the line was embedded into the left flipper, cutting deep into it.
“It was tail slapping,” Thompson said. “People got very wet. It was very unhappy for some time. And so we just had to wait it out until we could start seeing a pattern in its behavior, and then exploit that pattern for when it surfaced for air.”
On the next approach, the team used a V-shaped “flying knife.” It’s designed to slip off the end of long carbon fiber pole after it’s placed in the entangling gear. Attached to a rope and buoy, it saws through the entangling gear as the whale swims forward.
“The knife can work its magic, just by the drag of the buoy, and cut through the line,” Thompson said.
Dodd drove, Kolkmeyer aimed the flying knife and Katie Jackson, a wildlife biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, kept the buoy on track.
“They just made it happen,” Thompson said. “They were able to successfully cut that line on the left.”
They made the cut just a few feet above the pectoral fin. Next they used grappling hooks to pull up the gear still dragging below, hoping to relieve pressure on the wound from the embedded rope. They expected to find pots or other heavy equipment. Instead they found that the heaviness was caused by the line itself, which was lead-weighted.
“And once we were pulling all that in, there was some tension, like it was attached to the animal. And then the tension ended,” Thompson said.
As they examined the rope they realized what they had pulled in. On the cut end they discovered whale lice, flattened crustaceans that live on whales, indicating the rope was in contact with the whale and not dangling below. The next length of rope was even more telling.
“A few feet down from that cut was a very smelly, oily spot, which was the line that was embedded into the pectoral fin,” Thompson said. “So we were able to remove that from the whale.”
What’s next
The teams removed the sea anchor and the two of other buoys that were kegging the whale. They then put the satellite tag buoy back on to keep tracking Division.
Examining the sea anchor they realized the parachute-like device that fills with water as the whale swims had quit working well partway through the operation because sharks had bitten holes in it.
In all, the team removed more than 300 feet of rope from Division. Thompson said it was clear the gear wasn’t from the Southeast. That rope will be examined further to determine its exact origin.
It was Thompson’s first disentanglement. For two members of the aerial surveys teams it was not only their first disentanglement but also their first days of flying surveys. The perspective from the air is crucial to guiding those in the boats to where the whale is, how it’s oriented and where it’s headed. It’s demanding work.
“They’re going in circles, and they are feeling centrifugal force, and they have to lean out the plane’s window at a 45 degree angle,” Thompson said. “They are telling us, ‘two o’clock, two boat lengths, whale surfacing at your one o’clock, one boat length or four boat lengths.’ And they were doing that for hours.”
They weren’t experienced, but they were prepared. The Georgia aerial survey team, from the Clearwater Marine Aquarium Research Institute, had just participated in four days of disentanglement training with DNR in late November.
Whale researchers will keep tracking Division, who appears to be headed north. They’ll rely on teams up the coast to intervene further if needed.
The best case scenario would be for the whale to shed the rest of the gear on its own, allowing the telemetry buoy to detach from the whale. The disentanglement team would love for the next sighting of Division to be another gear-free one.
“It now has asymmetrical drag, and we’re hoping that it will continue to do its thing and use its tongue to work out what it can,” Thompson said.
After two days of exhausting, dangerous work in choppy, rolling seas, the team received auspicious news Thursday. The South Carolina aerial survey team spotted a third new mom and calf pair.
Every new calf is welcome, but this birth may not have happened if not for the efforts of team members Mark Dodd with the DNR and Clay George, formerly of the DNR and now the Southeast large whale program coordinator with NOAA Fisheries.
“The mom is Callosity Back, and she was actually disentangled by Mark and Clay in 2011,” Thompson said.
Like Division, Callosity Back was four years old when she was disentangled. This is her first known calf.
This article first appeared on The Current and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
