Joe Howlett, the courageous fisherman who was fatally struck Monday by a right whale that he helped to free in Canadian waters, often worked with New England Aquarium staffers to save whales when the animals became entangled.
The aquarium last fall shared one account, on the website of its Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, of a rescue that Howlett helped make in August.
Things were set in motion, the posting said, when researchers informed an aquarium team that a right whale was caught in fishing gear about 25 nautical miles from Campobello Island in New Brunswick, where Howlett and a group he helped found, the Campobello Whale Rescue Team, were based.
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The aquarium staffers alerted the rescue team, which raced to the scene.
The team that included Howlett spent five hours with the right whale, first cutting the lines that were exiting its mouth and moving toward the body and back to its tail, according to the account.
“As the lines were cut one by one, the entanglement first moved toward the tail and then slipped over to the right side, eventually just hanging off the right flipper,” the posting said. “One final cut and we all suddenly realized the whale was mostly free of rope. We later learned why the cutting was so difficult — the line measured 9/16ths of an inch in diameter. This is very heavy fishing line.”
The rescuers named the whale, which had previously been disentangled off the coast of Georgia, “FDR”, in reference to former president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who summered on Campobello Island and also established a treatment center for polio in Georgia, the posting said.
Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @TAGlobe.