‘Ropeless’ consortium aims to end entanglements of declining North Atlantic right whales

North Atlantic right whales face an increasingly uncertain future. Despite two decades of intensive monitoring and protection, their numbers have hit a seven-year skid, with an estimated 451 right whales remaining. Now, however, a newly formed team of engineers, scientists, conservationists and fishers hope they’ve snagged a possible strategy to save these endangered whales from their most significant remaining threat: entanglement in fishing gear. The approach hinges on developing so-called ropeless fishing gear. The goal of creating this modified equipment is to get rid of the long lines that connect traps, pots and nets to buoys or markers on the surface. North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis), at up to 14 meters (46 feet) long and weighing as much as 10 school buses, have a propensity for getting hung up in these ropes. Even if an entanglement with fishing gear doesn’t kill a whale from the injuries it inflicts, it may interfere with its ability to reproduce. The lines can slow the whale’s movement in the hunt for food, and that’s especially concerning for breeding females, as they try to bulk up enough to carry a baby through a 12-month pregnancy and then feed the 900-kilogram (1-ton) calf after it’s born. A rescue team works to disentangle a right whale. Photo by NOAA Photo Library (post0025) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons. A meeting in Woods Hole, Mass., on Feb. 1 launched the formation of a new ropeless consortium meant to “connect fishermen, engineers, manufacturers, scientists and managers,” according to a…

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