North Atlantic right whale spotted entangled in Gulf of Saint Lawrence

A North Atlantic right whale, one of an estimated 384 surviving animals, has been found entangled in fishing gear in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Fisheries and Oceans Canada said a surveillance flight spotted the whale on October 21 in the Bradelle Bank region, between New Brunswick's Acadian Peninsula, Prince Edward Island and Quebec's Îles-de-la-Madeleine. Scientists confirmed the entanglement this week after reviewing the footage.

The species is classified as critically endangered, and entanglement in fishing gear is its leading cause of death. Canada's main instrument for protecting the whales has been seasonal fishery closures in the gulf, and this entanglement happened anyway. The department has not identified the type of gear involved, nor the individual whale. If the animal is located again, officials plan to tag the gear with a satellite tracker and attempt a disentanglement — a rescue that cannot begin until a single animal is found a second time.

Confirmation came more than a week after the sighting, a week the whale has spent dragging the gear wherever it has moved. For a population of 384 animals, every entanglement is arithmetically significant; the species cannot absorb the routine losses a healthy population shrugs off.

For now the department knows this much: a critically endangered whale was seen entangled on October 21, and it has not been seen since.