What It Took to Free a Whale Entangled in 4,000 Pounds of Fishing Gear

The sight was a cause for celebration: a juvenile humpback whale stationed near the entrance of New York Harbor was yet another sign that the waters surrounding New York City are vastly cleaner than they were a decade ago. But recreational boaters quickly noticed that something was wrong.

The whale’s tail was entangled in a thatch of fishing gear — rope, netting, buoys, steel cables — that seemed to be anchoring the whale to the seafloor.

What happened next was “inspiring, to say the least,” said Robert DiGiovanni Jr., a chief scientist at the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society.

Experts flew to New York, determined to save the humpback. The Army Corps of Engineers sent a ship to assist them. It was a particularly difficult rescue: The crew ended up ditching their specialized tools and instead turned to bolt cutters and hacksaws.

In all, it took three days in late July to free the immobilized whale.

As recently as nine years ago, the nonprofit group Gotham Whale counted the whales off New York City and recorded just five. That number jumped to 377 in 2019, leading some scientists to conclude that the whales’ prey, and then the whales, had returned because of healthier waters.

But the influx of whales has also meant that the number of them injured or killed by entanglements, strandings and ship strikes is on the rise.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/01/nyregion/whale-rescue-ny-harbor.html