Thursday April 17, 2025
NOAA Fisheries —
A trained team from the Large Whale Entanglement Response Network freed a humpback whale that had been entangled in lines from crab traps off Monterey, California, since October 2024. Whale watching boats had first reported the whale entangled and helped the team find it to remove the gear in early April.
“All the passengers aboard wanted a follow up because they wanted to know what happened to the whale,” said Kate Cummings, captain and owner of Blue Ocean Whale Watch in Moss Landing, California. “It’s great news to share, so we are letting them know.”
Whale watchers and response teams had collected photos and other records of the whale off California over about 10 years that helped identify it when it became entangled. Researchers identified the whale as “Check,” who is part of the endangered humpback whale population that migrates between Central America and the West Coast.
Whale watch vessels first reported the entangled whale in October 2024, when it appeared to be entangled in lines and buoys from a Dungeness crab trap. They saw it only a few times, though, and responders could not find the whale again amid the deteriorating winter weather. However, they did locate and free another entangled whale.