A rescue operation is underway to save an endangered right whale that’s tangled and in trouble.
Researchers from the New England Aquarium spotted the young whale in Canadian waters wrapped in rope.
“On her first surfacing there was just enough water running off her back to make me unsure of what I was seeing, but as she dove it became very clear that there was rope over her back,” Kate McPherson, a research technician with the Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center, said in a statement. “My heart sank instantly as I alerted the rest of the boat that we had an entangled whale; this is the last thing any of us wants to see when we are out surveying.”
The scientists tagged it so they can track its movements as they work to free it.
The whale’s mother, named War, was first observed in 1988, but her precise age is not known. The tangled whale is her seventh known calf.
“Even with a relatively small known family, “War” and all her offspring, including this yearling, have collectively experienced at least nine entanglements and one vessel strike injury,” the aquarium said in a statement.
There is an estimated population of less than 360 North Atlantic right whales in the world, making it one of the most endangered large whale species in the world.
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