Endangered whales found entangled in rope off Massachusetts, and 1 is likely to die

Two endangered whales have been spotted entangled in fishing gear off Massachusetts, and one is likely to die from its injuries, the federal government said.

They are North Atlantic right whales, which number less than 400 and face existential threats from entanglement in gear and collisions with ships. An aerial survey found the whales swimming about 50 miles southeast of Nantucket on Dec. 9, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

One of the whales is a juvenile that has a thick line that passes across its head and back and is likely to succumb to the injury, the agency said in a statement. The other whale is an adult female who biologists think has suffered a sublethal injury from the entanglement, NOAA said.

NOAA said in a statement Tuesday that it would “work with authorized responders and trained experts to monitor the whales” and that it will “further document the entanglements and determine if entanglement responses will be possible.”

The news of the entangled whales follows the release of new data from researchers this fall showing a slight uptick in the whale's population. A group of researchers said two months ago that the population increased about 4% from 2020.

However, those researchers and environmental advocates cautioned at the time that the whales still faced the threat of extinction. The animal's population fell about 25% from 2010 to 2020.

The entanglement of the two whales illustrates the need for new safeguards to protect the animals, said Gib Brogan, campaign director at Oceana. Environmentalists have pushed for new restrictions on commercial fishing and shipping to try to protect the whales.

“These whales are not statistics; they are living beings enduring unimaginable suffering caused by human activities,” Brogan said.

The whales migrate every year and usually arrive in Cape Cod Bay in early winter and stay until around the middle of May. They give birth off the coasts of Georgia and Florida and are slow to reproduce, which is one of the reasons conservationists say they can't withstand additional mortality.

The whales were once abundant off the East Coast, but they were decimated during the era of commercial whaling. They have been federally protected for decades.

Some scientists have said climate change is a major threat to the whales because it has changed the availability of their food. That has caused them to stray from protected areas of ocean.

“North Atlantic right whales continue to be entangled at levels that could push this critically endangered species to extinction. It is distressing that multiple generations of right whales have been affected by the devastating harm of entanglements, which is resulting in deaths, health declines, and slower reproductive rates," said Amy Knowlton, senior scientist at the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium.