BAR HARBOR, Maine — After more than 24 hours, a 35-foot humpback whale entangled in fishing line and net was freed about 3:30 p.m. Saturday.
The whale, identified by a local researcher as a well-known humpback named Spinnaker, suffered what appeared to be injuries from the ropes, “but she swam off immediately,” said Maine Department of Marine Resources spokesman Jeff Nichols.
The crew of the Atlanticat whale watching boat spotted the distressed whale off Mount Desert Rock on Friday afternoon struggling with line wrapped around its head, back, tailstock, through its mouth and around a pectoral flipper, and it was connected to four floating buoys and bottom fishing gear that anchored it in place, according to a release from the Bar Harbor Whale Watch Co., which operates the vessel.
“The animal was breathing hard and obviously stressed and had a patch on its back where the line had rub[bed] the skin away and left a visible bleeding wound,” the release stated.
Maine Marine Patrol officers and specialists from the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, Massachusetts, worked Friday afternoon, and removed “a fair amount of line,” Nichols said. The operation was suspended as night fell, and 0fficials affixed a locating device on the whale to ensure rescuers could find it again, and a boat traveled out at 4 a.m. Saturday to locate it, Nichols said.
By 10 a.m. Saturday, rescuers were back at the task and used specialized tools to cut away a tangle of rope from around the female whale’s tail, Nichols said.
Jooke Robbins, the leader of a humpback whale research program at the Center for Coastal Studies, identified the whale based on the shape of its dorsal fin as a humpback named Spinnaker, according to the Bar Harbor Whale Watch Co.
Scott Landry, director of the Center for Coastal Studies, told Nichols that despite the ordeal, Spinnaker “appears to be healthy.”