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Department of Fisheries and Oceans personnel work to remove 137 metres of rope and gear from a humpback whale in Nanoose Bay, B.C., on Wednesday.HO/The Canadian Press
Fader the humpback has been coming back to British Columbia’s waters for the last two decades, but this time the whale was spotted with something extra – more than 130 metres of rope and fishing gear.
The whale entangled was first sighted Sunday in the Strait of Georgia by two vessels operated by Vancouver Island Whale Watch.
Cheyenne Brewster, a spokeswoman for Nanaimo-based company, said the boats encountered a pair of humpbacks during a regular boat tour.
As people on the vessels started taking photos, they noticed that one of the whales had an orange float trailing behind it, she said.
The entangled whale was later identified as Fader, while its companion is known to researchers as Wiggins, Brewster said.
Brewster said they contacted federal officials immediately, and the vessels were asked to keep track of the whales location off the east side of Vancouver Island.
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Fisheries Department officers arrived and attached a satellite tag on the trailing gear, to help them track the whale’s movements until a full-scale operation could be attempted.
The department said in a statement that more than 137 meters of rope and gear were removed from the whale on Wednesday in a six-hour-long rescue process in Nanoose Bay, north of Nanaimo.
“It was a huge effort by DFO marine mammal rescue, DFO Victoria Whale Protection Unit and Department of National Defence,” the department said in a statement.
Brewster’s team was overjoyed.
“There was a lot of line to work with, lots of stuff to cut off the whale and get rid of, so, definitely a very time-consuming activity,” she said.
Vancouver Island Whale Watch later said in a Facebook post that the quick reporting, continuous monitoring, and deployment of tracking equipment “very likely prevented a tragic outcome.”
The company said entanglements pose a “severe risk” to humpback whales as the gear can impede their ability to feed and travel, leave deep wounds, and can be fatal if left unnoticed.
Brewster said local humpbacks were once thought to be “locally extinct” but have been coming back over the last three decades
“And that has been kind of a double-edged sword,” she said. “We’ve seen the population go back up, which is absolutely great, but unfortunately, it has led to a lot more entanglements.”
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She said one of the most heartbreaking examples is Starry Knight, a humpback calf born in 2024, that has been disentangled with help from people twice within five weeks this year.
Grace Baer, research and project manager with North Coast Cetacean Society, said whale entanglements are common, especially during summer and fall when a large number of humpback whales return to the B.C. coast.
“Their population is actually still recovering from the days of commercial whaling. So, when we have more whales coming back into an area that overlaps with fishing, there’s always a chance that an entanglement could happen,” she said.
Baer, who is working on a scar analysis study to see how many whales have survived entanglement on the B.C. coast, said it’s a pressing issue, with some whales picking up gear and carrying it all the way to their breeding grounds in Hawaii or Mexico.
Entanglement can turn into a slow, painful process for the whales, sometimes leading to starvation or infection, she added.
Brewster said one of their vessels met Fader after the gear was cut away this week and he was gliding effortlessly through the water, “looking nice and healthy and doing well.”
“Because they were like, super far south, like in American waters basically. So, the fact that they went from Nanaimo all the way down there after being disentangled yesterday is pretty impressive,” she said.
Brewster said Fader’s journey sends a strong message to anyone on the water to keep an eye out for lines or floats, and notify the authorities when necessary.
“We live in a very beautiful area, and we need to preserve nature and all the wildlife in it, so just make sure that when you are out on the water, just be vigilant.”
