North Atlantic right whale entangled in fishing gear spotted again in Gulf of St. Lawrence

FILE — A pair of North Atlantic right whales interact at the surface of Cape Cod Bay, March 27, 2023, in Massachusetts. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, NOAA permit # 21371)

HALIFAX — A young endangered whale tangled in fishing gear has been spotted in the Gulf of St. Lawrence for the second time this week, but the health of the animal remains unclear.

A senior federal official said the North Atlantic right whale was observed by crew aboard a surveillance aircraft on Monday as they were flying off the east coat of New Brunswick, near Shippagan. And it was spotted again Wednesday on the west side of Quebec’s Iles-de-la-Madeleine.

Brett Gilchrist, the Fisheries Department’s national programs director, said photos of the five-year-old male appear to show there is little or no rope around the whale’s mouth, which means its feeding habits may be unaffected.

“But it’s hard to tell from the photos, so we really need to get closer to the whale,” Gilchrist said in an interview Thursday. “It did not look like it was an emaciated whale, so maybe it’s a recent entanglement.”

Some whales have managed to survive for more than a decade while dragging gear behind them, he said, adding that at some point, no further attempts are made to remove the gear.

The population of these critically endangered mammals is less than 400, though their numbers have been slowly increasing since 2020.

Meanwhile, Gilchrist confirmed fishery officers tried but failed to attach a satellite tracking device to the gear trailing behind the young whale, known only as No. 5192.

The department said the tagging effort was thwarted by rough weather.

“We’ve been flying in the area, trying to re-sight the whale,” Gilchrist said. “The good news is our whale management measures continue throughout the spring and summer, and we’re up in the air pretty much every day that the weather is good.”

Since the whales started arriving in Canadian waters earlier this spring, No. 5192 has been the first and only right whale to be recorded as the victim of an entanglement. Fishing gear entanglements and vessel strikes are the leading causes of serious injury and death for right whales.

Ben Grundy, oceans campaigner with the U.S.-based Center for Biological Diversity, said even though a right whale can be as big as a city bus, these elusive creatures can travel great distances without being detected.

“They can spend a large amount of time underwater and not near the surface,” Grundy said in an interview from Alameda, Calif.

“When we do see them resurface, they’ll be there for a couple of minutes, but then they’ll disappear underwater and could pop up … hundreds of yards further from where you initially spotted them. They’re a pretty stealthy species.”

As for entanglements, Grundy said research from the U.S.-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggests that only one of every five entanglements is recorded.

“While we have only two confirmed cases (in Canada and the U.S.) so far this year, it is possible that there are actually five times as many entanglements,” he said.

When and if the 5192 is spotted again, another attempt will be made at attaching a tag, weather permitting. That task could fall to the Campobello Whale Rescue Team, whose members are also trained to remove fishing gear from entangled whales.

Based in New Brunswick at the western end of the Bay of Fundy, the team is licensed by the Fisheries Department to carry out this dangerous work.

“There’s a reason why there’s only a handful of people authorized …. to interact with a large entangled whale,” Gilchrist said. “These are whales in distress, and they can act erratically …. There have been serious incidences and fatalities in the past.”

To protect these whales from entanglements, the Canadian government uses a series of measures including temporary closures of fishing grounds when a whale is spotted in Gulf St. Lawrence, the Bay of Fundy or the Roseway Basin off southwestern Nova Scotia.

An online map produced by the Fisheries Department shows a large number of closures have been imposed.

“This has helped protect right whale populations and we’ve seen … a stabilization of the population,” Gilchrist said.

“At the same time, we do continue to see entanglements in certain places in Canada and the U.S. in certain fisheries. So we clearly need to do more.”

In February, the federal government introduced its five-year Whalesafe Fishing Gear Strategy, which is aimed at introducing fishing gear technology that could reduce entanglements. This new gear includes various types of traps that use little or no rope.

Snow crab fishers in Gulf of St. Lawrence have already used this type of trap to haul in more than one million pounds of crab, Gilchrist said.

“The timeline is five years for the entire country. And the priority is to address measures for right whales.”

By Michael MacDonald

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 12, 2026.