The method was used Jan. 15 off the Florida coast to free a young North Atlantic right whale from about 50 feet of line wrapped through its mouth and around its flippers. A satellite monitor attached to the whale during the rescue attempt this month shows it survived. “It’s a big step for us,” said Michael Moore, a senior research specialist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts who was on the rescue team. The same team has tried the technique during one other rescue of a free-swimming whale. Wildlife authorities for years have tried different ways to save whales tangled in gear that cuts their flesh, restricts feeding and causes infection and starvation. It’s a major threat to the 300 to 400 critically endangered whales. They generally migrate seasonally from the Lower Bay of Fundy in Canada during the summer to calving grounds off the Florida coast in the fall and winter.
