LIHUE — While one entangled humpback whale was freed from nearly 300 feet of line off the coast of Maui on Jan. 12, another is still trailing debris after response teams lost track of it on Jan. 4.
“That’s an adult whale with a bit of gill net around the tail,” said Ed Lyman entanglement response coordinator for the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary.
The whale was reported off the coast of Hawaii Island on Jan. 4, and responders were able to make contact with the whale before dark, when it slipped away. Three days later, the team responded to a report off the coast of Maui.
“It ended up being the same whale. We mounted a response and lost track of it,” Lyman said. “We got good images though and we’ve been on the lookout.”
The entanglement probably isn’t life threatening, Lyman said, because the gill net is wrapped loosely around its tail and very little debris is trailing.
“There are indicators that it had been carrying more gear, but a lot had fallen off. We’d still like to catch up to the whale and get it off,” he said.
The latest successful disentanglement took a two-day effort after the whale was reported on Jan. 11 at 11:40 a.m. by the captain of the fishing vessel Layla. A rapid first response was mounted by the West Maui response team. Lyman’s team arrived on scene in their vessel Kohola at 1:35 p.m.
This was a particularly active whale, which stretched the response out to two days.
“We ended up standing down because of that, almost an hour before sunset,” Lyman said. “We think they don’t always know we’re there to help them. The more time you’re in proximity to the animal, they’re likely to get tired of you and get evasive.”
Once the animal calmed down, the team in the inflatable was able to attach a buoy halfway up the trailing gear and remove about 110 feet of line. The team tried to pull the remaining gear from the whale’s mouth, but was unsuccessful.
So, they added a tracking buoy to the remaining gear and waited until morning. Jan. 12, the team was able to pull the remaining gear from the animal’s mouth by about 10:20 a.m.
The entangled whale was the third animal the entanglement team responded to, and the fifth response that’s been mounted as freeing two of the animals took more than one trip.
When they’re not freeing humpback whales, Lyman and his team conduct health and risk assessments on individuals and the population of humpback whales within the sanctuary.
Monday, they were in Auau Channel, between the Lahaina and the island of Lanai, following a mother humpback whale and her calf who were swimming in the warm, calm water.
Another group of about four male humpbacks were in the vicinity that day as well, according to Lyman.
“We’re out here as much as our budgets allow to do a health and risk assessment on individuals and on the population,” Lyman said.
He continued: “I like to think of the sanctuary as whale doctors and since the whales don’t come to us, we have to be out here looking at them, doing our diagnosis.”
The team also targets and retrieves marine debris from the ocean during their monitoring and response efforts.
While responding to the entangled whale on Jan. 12, for instance, the team gathered enough line to fill the inflatable.
“Bundle after bundle of marine debris,” Lyman said. “And we’re still waiting to identify the debris. The numbers were on the buoys so we think it’s from the feeding grounds.”
Finding the source of the entanglements is very important, not as a way to point fingers, he explained, but as a tool for prevention and threat reduction to the whales.
“Prevention is critical. Everyone focuses on cutting a whale free , but we spend a lot of time trying to reduce the threat and that’s the primary goal,” Lyman said. “We’re going to help a lot more animals that way.”
