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Members of NOAA’s Marine Mammal Stranding Network are asking for help from the public in locating a humpback whale entangled in fishing gear in the Stephens Passage/Lynn Canal area near Juneau.
The whale was first spotted Wednesday by Gastineau Guiding tour operators between Coghlan and Stick Islands, just outside of Auke Bay. It was traveling west at 3-4 miles per hour, with a big yellow buoy trailing about 5-8 feet behind the blowhole. The animal didn’t appear to be distressed and was breathing about every three minutes.
The whale was also spotted Wednesday by biologists from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game as they were conducting a herring survey near the southeast tip of Shelter Island.
NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement, NOAA scientists including a veterinarian, as well as the U.S. Coast Guard, mounted an effort to re-locate the animal to assess if the entanglement was life threatening, and to determine if intervention was warranted. They have been unable to re-locate the whale.
All mariners are asked to keep a sharp look out for the whale, and to report sightings to NOAA’s Marine Mammal Stranding hotline at 877-925-7773 or the Coast Guard at 463-2000 or on Channel 16.
Comments (10)
Add commentEditing
It's Stephens Passage, not Stephan Richards Passage. Do some editing Juneau Empire!!! Anyone who has spent anytime here in town knows the difference. That's what they get for firing their reporters and replacing them with sub-standard, cheap workers. My high school paper did a better job!!!
Location fix
AukeBayRay,
Thanks for catching the mistake. It's now been fixed.
Wow AukeBayRay ...
... you need to take a chill pill. It's sunny outside, go enjoy the weather and don't let some lousy editing get under your skin.
Hope the whale is okay.
NOAA ENTANGLING ITSELF, address correction
That's what Noaa gets for being so concerned with pollution that it totally turns a 100% blind eye towards commercial fishing and its many gear forms! All that fishing gear strung all over our oceans, killing millions of marine animals and birds! PULL IT ON OVER NOAA, YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM WHICH PUT THAT GEAR AROUND THAT WHALE!
The Great Cook Inlet Beluga Whale Mystery
Have you had a chance to read the latest monster added to the Federal Register by the U.S. Department Of Commerce, DOC? Well it's 35 pages of online reading and located a
http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/frules/76fr20180.pdf
People are the Earth's Defenders
as well as the Earth's Destroyers.
sightings??
we saw a whale "freaking out" and slapping its tail alot(bout 10 times) yesterday near Aldershiem lodge out near the bridgett cove area.. it didnt look very happy.. was this the same one.. we didnt have binocs and couldnt see if a bouy was in its tush..
Can you imagine
Sitting down to read this article and realizing that the buoy is yours! Yikes.
My family just got home from
My family just got home from a night out on our boat. We came across the whale by the Dorothy Lake power house. We had no idea that it had already been sited. We tried to radio the Coast Gaurd know but nobody answered. We ended up going to an area where we had phone service and calling multiple times but nobody picked up, so we left a message. Very disappointed that the sunshine appearently led people away from their phones.
Alaskan Teacher
A whale flapping it's tail is not "freaking out" It's playing happily in the sunshine. It's often called "fluking". There can be many reasons why whales do it.
Lifelong.....
The truth is we don't know why whales tale or fluke flap, or breach. Assigning a positive human emotion to it is probably just as silly as as assigning a negative one.