The young humpback whale swam near his mother out on Stellwagen Bank in the Gulf of Maine. He had had many experiences in his young life, but that day three weeks ago was unusual.
Born around the beginning of the year in the Caribbean, somewhere in the Greater Antilles — perhaps in the warm, calm waters of Silver Bank off the coast of the Dominican Republic — he began his 1,600-mile migration north when he was only six weeks old. Along the way, he might have encountered a great white shark or perhaps some orcas, but his mother protected him and nursed him with her rich milk, as she continues to do.
Cow and calf arrived on the bank by mid-May and have been there ever since, she feeding mostly on sand eels, he watching and learning and occasionally playing and breaching out of the water. He has become a bit more independent, straying farther from her side until she calls him back.
At first, the bank was relatively free from boats. There was an occasional large one full of cheering people; less often, smaller ones trailing lines in the water. But as June progressed, the waters became increasingly busy with the smaller boats with the lines.
That day three weeks ago, as the calf swam past one of those boats, he felt an unfamiliar tug. He instinctively rolled forward and away. As he moved, he felt a tightening on his left flipper. In the following days, the tightening increased — and with it, the pain.
He cannot understand this new situation. It fits nothing he has encountered before. He knows the water, its buoyancy and liquidity, its waves, swells, and currents; he knows the bottom and where the bank drops off into the deep; he knows the sounds that his mother makes and those of other whales; and he knows the noise of engines — some robust and throaty, some small and tinny — although not really what they signify. He does not understand this tightening, this pain. But he goes on.
This calf in trouble was first reported by a whale watch naturalist to Scott Landry, director of the Marine Animal Entanglement Response team at the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies, on June 26. Since that report, and at the time of this writing, Landry and his crew have twice attempted to rescue the young whale. The first time, I watched from a whale watch boat as they patiently followed the calf, trying to get in just the right position. They were out all day. The second time, on July 5, they were again out in pursuit for over seven hours — without success.
They operate from the Ibis, a 35-foot rigid-hull inflatable that has been modified for just this purpose. Their equipment consists of a 30-foot aluminum pole with a hook-shaped knife at the end.
Landry showed me close-up images of the monofilament, which would be invisible at any distance. It is a single wrap lodged more or less at the calf’s elbow. It has already cut through the flesh halfway to the juncture of the radius and ulna. Whale skin is surprisingly thin and vulnerable and is not adapted to a threat such as monofilament, which cuts like wire.
Landry says he has about a six-inch target for his knife. He and his crew “have almost been there twice,” within six or seven feet of the whale, which is astonishing when you consider that they have to deal with open sea conditions, a moving boat, a moving whale (with a wary mother nearby), and other boats in the area.
An almost impossible task — “but we are trying our damnedest.” The stakes are high: “This is a very bad situation,” Landry says. The calf is growing rapidly and the line gets tighter: there is the real risk of losing the flipper. There are no one-flippered whales in the ocean.
Whales face many threats: long-term ones like a warming, noisy, polluted ocean and more immediate ones like ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear. Of all these, entanglement is probably the greatest: well over half of all humpbacks show entanglement scars; at least 15 percent get into new entanglements every year. But these are just statistics. There is a calf out there in a dilemma it cannot understand. It did not evolve any defenses against the tuna-fishing fleet on Stellwagen Bank.
Must it be considered collateral damage, or can we find a way to make the world safer for baby whales?
