Humpback whales are a common sight around Kodiak’s waterways, often reported breaching and splashing near fishing boats. But sometimes, like earlier this month, they’re reported entangled or dead.
Matt Van Daele, the Sun’aq Tribe of Kodiak’s natural resources director, was one of the responders in mid-November. He’s been training for years to help save entangled whales, but this one likely died about a week before it was reported.
“She was about 28 feet long, had a pretty massive, severe entanglement,” Van Daele told KMXT. “The entanglement was probably a line that she got through her mouth and was not able to free herself, and then started spinning and she had three or four wraps around her tail stock.”
Van Daele and officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Alaska State Parks found the whale stuck to the bottom of the water. She was found with several cuts around her body from the line, some six inches deep.
Humpbacks can generally hold their breath for up to 45 minutes. Van Daele said it likely died from a mix of exhaustion and drowning.
The team didn’t do a full necropsy, however he estimated it was just a year old when it died.
“It’s really frustrating and a bummer that she wasn’t spotted while she was still alive, because she would have been a perfect candidate to attempt a disentanglement,” Van Daele said.
Van Daele and other biologists removed the gear, but it wasn’t immediately clear what type of fishing it was used for, or where she might have picked it up.
The metal is heavily rusted and tangled, so there’s a lot of uncertainty. He brought some fishermen in to try to identify it – the leading guesses are longline gear or some sort of derelict pot.
Van Daele said there is a silver lining though.
“It did give the Kodiak team an excellent opportunity to practice with whale disentanglements, albeit on a dead one,” he said. “But, it was a very good, safe, controlled situation.”
He said any entangled marine mammals should be reported to the federal government’s hotline, or directly to the Tribe for them to start working with federal partners.
The 24-hour marine mammal stranding hotline is 1 (877) 925-7773.
