Forty years ago, researchers with the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown were getting ready to sit down together for a turkey feast, but a certain whale in Cape Cod Bay had different plans for them.
Receiving a report of a number of whales in the harbor, they abandoned their holiday plans and set out on what would turn out to be their first-ever successful whale disentanglement, led by center co-founder Charles "Stormy" Mayo and fellow scientist David Mattila. It was a pivotal moment — that would lead to the creation of the center's marine animal entanglement response program. Today the program is renowned worldwide for rescuing marine animals, particularly whales and sea turtles, from life-threatening entanglements in fishing gear.
An unexpected Thanksgiving rescue
The story began on Thanksgiving Day in 1984, when the group was alerted to the presence of the whales feeding and socializing in Provincetown Harbor.
"We wanted to audiotape the songs of the whales because we had discovered a couple of years before that they don't sing just in their tropical areas, but that they started to sing up here," explained Mayo, recently recollecting that day.
But their research was interrupted when they came across "an old friend" entangled in fishing gear that was hindering her movements, cutting deeply into her skin and preventing her from feeding — a humpback whale Mayo had first seen as a calf and had named Ibis because of a marking on her tail that resembled an ancient Egyptian ibis glyph.
'Grab a breath and sink down'
The whale had been first spotted that season by Mayo's then-assistant Carol "Krill" Carson a few months earlier, tangled in gillnets. In mid-October, she had been found again near Gloucester Harbor, struggling to surface as her entanglement anchored her in place.
"All she could do was surge to the surface, grab a breath and sink down," Mayo said. "It was a pretty tense situation."
The scientists, who had never attempted a disentanglement before, tried using floats to hold Ibis up so she could breathe while they worked to help her, but her anchored entanglement exerted so much force that the floats kept tearing off and eventually Ibis sank and "didn't come up again."
Everyone had assumed Ibis was dead when their sonar showed a large object on the ocean floor, but on Thanksgiving, there was no mistaking the distinctive marking on her tail.
At that moment, Mayo and Mattila and the others —also including Carson, Mary Pratt Havermale, Sharon Pittman, and Mark Gilmore — were faced with a challenge: they had no established disentanglement protocol and no specialized tools. Improvising, they used a grapple anchor tied to large plastic floats to slow Ibis down, allowing them to approach her. After hours of effort, they managed to cut away the entangling net, saving her life.
The beginning of a legacy
It was a turning point for the center, marking the beginning of the techniques and strategies they would develop over the next four decades to rescue more than 200 large whales and other marine animals.
The work has been especially important for critically endangered North Atlantic right whales, which are often caught in fishing gear. These whales are powerful and difficult to free, but rescuing them means increasing the chances for their survival and reproduction.
Philip Hamilton, a senior scientistat theNewEnglandAquariumAnderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, who previously also worked at the Center for Coastal Studies, praises the team’s willingness to put themselves at risk, acknowledging the dangers inherent in whale disentanglement.
It's important work, he said, particularly for endangered species like the right whales for whom each rescued individual means one more animal surviving to reproduce.
Hamilton has himself received training through the center to deploy telemetry gear on the entanglements of whales encountered in the field.
"The telemetry buoy is a really great component of the work they've developed — the ability for people who aren't on the disentanglement team to be able to tag the whales" so they can be found again for a rescue response.
Not every disentanglement is successful, Hamilton said, "but it's always worth trying."
Inspiring global disentanglement efforts
The center’s success has inspired global efforts. Mattila, who is also involved with the International Whaling Commission, helped establish the large network along the East Coast in 1996, has trained researchers worldwide, including in Hawaii, and organized international workshops.
The center’s expertise is now sought after globally, with researchers from 34 countries attending training sessions on how to safely rescue entangled whales.
Under the leadership of Scott Landry, who joined the program in 2002, the disentanglement team on Cape Cod continues to evolve. The basic principles of whale rescue remain the same, but the tools and techniques have advanced significantly, Mayo said.
Today, the team uses an array of specialized equipment and cutting-edge telemetry to track and monitor entangled whales, making rescues safer and more effective.
However, Hamilton also emphasizes that the work is only a stopgap. As Mayo has often said, “put us out of business.” Both scientists agree that the real solution lies in addressing the larger challenge: reducing the risk of entanglements in the first place. The disentanglement team, while committed to saving as many whales as possible, sees their work as a Band-Aid to a systemic problem.
The number of whales that rescuers find entangled that can actually be freed is too low, Mayo said.
"The important thing is for us to realize that these guys — who I was one of — doing this sort of swashbuckling thing is not going to save whales," he said.
Heather McCarron writes about climate change, environment, energy, science and the natural world. Reach her at hmccarron@capecodonline.com.
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