North Atlantic Right whales are on the brink of extinction. There are approximately 360 individuals left, of which only about 70 are reproductively active females. In 2017, an unusual mortality even resulted in the death of 37 individuals. Ship strikes and entanglements remain the leading cause of death for this population.
On August 20, 2022, whale #5120, then a yearling and the only offspring of Squilla (#3720), was spotted of the coast of New Brunswick entangled in in ropes and fishing gear by an aerial team. Almost 200 feet of fishing line was trailing behind her. The team determined that, based on the injuries sustained by the gear, the whale was likely to die from this entanglement.
#5120 was spotted again, on January 18, 2023, still wrapped in the same gear, off the coast of Provincetown, Massachusetts. Due to weather conditions, a response team was unable to complete a disentanglement operation.
On January 28, 2024, a dead female North Atlantic Right Whale was found on a beach in Martha’s Vineyard, wrapped in fishing gear, with old ropes deeply embedded in the flesh around its tail.
The whale was identified as whale #5120. On February 2nd, NOAA confirmed that chronic entanglement with a rope deeply embedded in its tail, was the cause of death.
And yesterday, NOAA confirmed what many experts have been claiming for several years, that fishing gear from the New England lobster industry is a cause of North Atlantic Right Whale mortality.
Based upon our analysis of the gear, including the purple markings on the rope recovered from North Atlantic right whale #5120, NOAA Fisheries has concluded that the rope is consistent with the rope used in Maine state water trap/pot buoy lines. We have been in consultation with our New England state resource management partners, and they have viewed the gear.
NOAA
For years, the lobster industry has asserted that their fishing gear is not a significant contributor to Right Whale deaths, pointing to ship strikes as the leading cause. The industry rightly points out that: “This is the first reported entanglement of a right whale in Maine lobster gear in 20 years and the first death attributed to the fishery.” Conveniently, however, this statement ignores that fact that it wasn’t until 2022 that lobster lines in the northeast were required to have unique markings to identify where that gear is from. Previous to these marking requirements, the fishery could plausibly deny that they were the source of entangling lines.
Those rules went into effect on May 1, 2022. Less than four months later, whale #5120 wrapped its tail around a lobster line.
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