A Cape Cod marine rescue team has been working to disentangle a North Atlantic right whale from a fishing gear entanglement that could kill it, Provincetown’s Center for Coastal Studies announced Monday.
The 5-year-old whale, known as #5110, has had multiple ropes and buoys caught around his upper jaw since at least December 2024, the marine research and rescue non-profit said in a press release.
A disentanglement effort could not attempted when a survey team first noticed the issue, as the whale was too far offshore to be reached by a rescue team before sunset, the Center for Coastal Studies said. He was next spotted in Cape Cod Bay on April 10, and the non-profit’s marine rescue team boated out to try and disentangle him.
The rescue team managed to remove some of the fishing gear using a specialized grappling hook that they threw into the entanglement, the Center for Coastal Studies said. But after their initial success, they spent several hours trying and failing to approach the whale again.
The entangled whale was spotted in Cape Cod Bay once again on April 14 and 15 within a large group of right whales that were feeding, the Center for Coastal Studies said. The rescue team is monitoring the weather in the hopes that they can soon boat out and try to disentangle him further, as his entanglement is still considered “likely lethal.”
“This will be a particularly challenging case to solve. While there may be enough entangling gear on the whale to kill him over the long-term, there is not enough gear for us to use techniques we would normally use,” rescue team Director Scott Landry said in the release.
