Saving the Right Whale

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: It's one of the largest animals on Earth, able to swim 50 miles in a single day and dive to depths of 600 feet.

CHRISTY: Oh, my goodness!

All right, stop right here, there's one right next to us.

CHARLES MAYO: He's right, right here, under the bow.

(Christy laughing) MAYO: There he is!

CHRISTY: Holy shenanigans!

NARRATOR: A great whale virtually free from predators.

And yet, in ten years, 30% of the population has disappeared.

MAYO: They're dealing with an ecosystem that is very hard to figure out.

NARRATOR: With a life expectancy of 70 years, not a single adult is known to have died of natural causes in more than a decade.

MOIRA BROWN: Oh, yeah, it's really got a lot of red on its tail.

Lines in front of the blowholes, behind the blowholes, two more.

NARRATOR: Now scientists are racing to try to understand these giants and help them survive.

MAYO: We have a very limited view on right whales.

BROWN (on radio): 11:00, the whale did a backflip.

MARTIN NOËL: Oh, belly up, that whale is having fun.

MAYO: I view them as a mystery.

They're rife with questions... (blows out) ...and the answers are hard-won.

NARRATOR: "Saving the Right Whale."

Right now, on "NOVA."

♪ ♪ ANNOUNCER: Major funding for "NOVA" is provided by the following: ♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Every fall, pregnant North Atlantic right whales leave their northern feeding grounds and swim 1,300 miles south to the warm waters off South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida to give birth.

This is the only known calving area for North Atlantic right whales.

Between December and March, the next generation of calves is born.

But from 2009 to 2018, the number of births per year dropped dramatically, from 39 to zero.

Scientists want to know why and what it would take to turn those birth numbers around.

Barb Zoodsma coordinates NOAA's right whale recovery program in the Southeast.

In February 2020, she heads out to look for new calves with biologist Tom Pitchford.

WOMAN (on radio): Harvey, Orion mostly at the surface and traveling in the northwest direction slowly, over.

Perfect, we're all set, thank you very much.

ZOODSMA: The plane just radioed us, and they said there's a Alpha Charlie over here, and that's code for an adult and calf.

As a protection measure, we're kind of cryptic on the radios.

Katie, will you let me know when you have eyes on 'em?

KATIE JACKSON: Will do!

Thank you.

The right whale count of calves born thus far in the Southeast, and that's all the Southeast United States, is at ten.

It's better than the seven last year, and two years ago, when there was zero.

It's nowhere near enough to get the population moving in a positive direction.

Our average calving interval was three to five years for a long time, and what we've been seeing since 2010 is that just creep up and up and up and up.

And so we're into the seven-, eight-, nine-, ten-year calving interval for a lot of females.

All right, I'm moving in a little bit slower.

♪ ♪ ZOODSMA: Look how smooth it is.

These calves are very weak swimmers when they're first born, and so these are real good conditions for the calves to learn how to swim.

When they leave here, they have hundreds of miles to swim.

They're gonna need a really strong bond to make it there together.

NARRATOR: The whales can't stay in these calm, warm waters for long.

The mothers need to eat huge quantities of food in the spring and summer to survive, and so by March, the pairs head north to the plankton-rich waters off New England and Canada.

The calves will nurse for at least ten months and more than double in size before they learn to find food.

Most calves stay with their mothers for about 12 months before venturing out on their own.

♪ ♪ PITCHFORD: In Florida, we work closely with groups of citizen scientists who are extending the reach of our airplane by going to the beach and scanning the ocean for right whales, and it can be a huge help.

NARRATOR: This is Lily Pinkham's first year volunteering with the Marineland Right Whale Project.

PINKHAM: The first thing I saw was a spout.

As time went on, and I started pointing it out to everybody, it started putting its flippers up, and then we saw that there were two spouts, and we were able to identify it as a right whale because of the V-shaped blow.

That was a good, that was a big one.

WOMAN: But the first sighting, that was all due to Lily.

The first sighting, that was due to our team, yeah, that's right.

(chuckles) NARRATOR: The first calf sighted in the 2020 season was born to a 15-year-old first-time mother.

This is female 3560, named Snow Cone, with her baby.

We won't be able to identify this calf just based on what callosities we see now.

Uh-huh, right.

But they darted, they darted this calf, too, so they have, they have DNA which will help identify him later.

And look, the calf's upside down.

You see both the pectoral fins.

Yes.

WOMAN: Oh, my gosh!

(others laughing) NARRATOR: As right whales mature, roughened patches of skin, like callouses, form on their heads.

This pattern is unique, like a fingerprint, and helps scientists identify and keep track of individual whales over the years.

ELLIS: She's now been seen off Miami and possibly the Keys.

(others exclaiming) They're trying to confirm that, so... WOMAN: This year?

Yeah, right now!

Right now.

But generally, it's just unusual behavior for them, for any of the right whales to go south of Canaveral, so 3560 is going to keep us guessing for a while.

WOMAN: Yeah.

ELLIS: And so the question is, will she turn around and come back or will she go into the Gulf of Mexico?

WOMAN: Right.

NARRATOR: Right whales have roamed the North Atlantic for millions of years.

Marine biologists estimate that before commercial whaling took off in the 16th century, right whales numbered in the thousands.

From 2012 to 2022, the population is estimated to have fallen from 471 to 336, and the North Atlantic right whale is considered critically endangered.

Now marine scientists and conservationists are tracking the whales over their 1,300-mile annual migration on a quest to understand what's happening to the whales and what they need to survive.

So apparently, there's one right whale out here, maybe two, based on what the sightings are.

NARRATOR: Nick Hawkins is a wildlife photographer on a mission to document the lives of the North Atlantic right whales.

He wants to raise awareness of the animal and its plight.

(water spouting in distance) Hear that?

Yeah, right there.

Yeah, that's him.

It's got to be, we'll get a good shot here.

No one's around, and... (engine revving) HAWKINS: Most people don't see a North Atlantic right whale for the first time as their first whale, but I actually did.

When I was maybe eight, my parents and my grandparents brought me to an island in the Bay of Fundy called Grand Manan.

And we were surrounded by, like, 40 right whales, you know, surface-active groups, and at the time, I was just, like... NARRATOR: Very few great whales behave like this, frolicking together at the surface in large groups.

It's a key part of mating, as males vie for the attention of usually a lone female.

At 50 tons and 50 feet long, this competitive behavior ensures only the healthiest whales reproduce.

But since the 1980s, the average size of a North Atlantic right whale has decreased by three feet.

HAWKINS: The Bay of Fundy was the feeding ground.

Two-thirds of the population was coming to the Bay of Fundy every summer and feeding.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: The Bay of Fundy is a northeastern branch of the Gulf of Maine.

In 2015, scientists discovered the whales were abandoning the bay, and many were going about 200 miles farther north to the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Marine biologists believed the whales were traveling farther north in search of food.

No one knew whether the whales' changing habits would be permanent or temporary.

But the impact was clear.

REPORTER: One, then two, then six dead whales, and the death count hasn't stopped.

REPORTER: With only hundreds left in existence, they've suffered a terrible blow.

REPORTER: "Unprecedented."

That's how scientists describe this summer's death toll of 12 North Atlantic right whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence alone.

HAWKINS: We have this critically endangered whale species right off the eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada, and, like, barely anybody knows about it.

And they're dying at a rate that's greater than the entire species' reproduction.

NARRATOR: In 2017, scientists documented the deaths of 17 North Atlantic right whales, 12 in Canadian waters and five off the U.S. coast-- nearly four percent of the population at the time.

The two known causes of death were vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear.

As the population declines, whale biologists are focusing on another critical feeding ground where things are changing, trying to figure out why more and more right whales are coming here each year.

♪ ♪ Ecologist Charles Mayo has been studying right whales in Cape Cod Bay, off the coast of Massachusetts, for more than 30 years.

MAYO: He's right here, he's right here.

We're out of gear.

CHRISTY: Oh, my goodness!

All right, stop right here, there's one right next to us.

MAYO: He's right, right here, under the bow.

(Christy laughing) MAYO: There he is.

CHRISTY: Holy shenanigans!

♪ ♪ Whew!

MAYO: We're seeing five here, and we probably have 40 or 50 to the south of us in little groups, feeding groups.

It's pretty special.

Let me tell you something, there's a lot of power in that.

CHRISTY: Pec slapping!

That's gorgeous.

MAYO: Look at that mouth open.

God knows... His mouth is wide open.

Whoa!

NARRATOR: Right whales are baleen whales that filter plankton, microorganisms adrift in the ocean currents.

Healthy adults consume over 1,000 pounds of plankton each day during the spring and summer.

This helps the females build up a one-foot-thick blubber layer, giving them enough energy to survive long migrations and nurse calves.

(calling): Christy?

CHRISTY (faintly): Yeah?

Yeah, I think we ought to take an in-path.

Up a little bit.

So we turn that... And that goes over.

All right, clearing.

One meter!

(switch clicks, motor whirring) Okay, down one meter.

♪ ♪ (switch clicks, motor stops) MAYO: We're in the path that the animal had been swimming, pumping water from various depths, collecting plankton that's coming in.

CHRISTY: Yep, definitely not much there.

NARRATOR: Today, Mayo's team is sampling the water, trying to determine the quality and quantity of plankton the whales are foraging in the bay.

MAYO: So we're trying to look for layers of food to in part explain why the whale is doing what it's doing, which is feeding right close to the surface.

CHRISTY: Two meters!

MAYO: And at the same time, we're collecting information from an electronic gadget that is recording salinity, temperature, light penetration, density of chlorophyll in the water.

♪ ♪ We're trying to figure out what these whales need out of this really critical ecosystem.

Early on, maybe a quarter of the population would come here.

But in the recent years, maybe 60%, 70% of this population in this little tiny bay-- it's a tiny place.

That means that those whales have left somewhere where they used to go, and is that because the offshore areas are failing?

NARRATOR: Marine scientists have been trying to figure out why the whales are changing their habits and abandoning the old feeding areas.

♪ ♪ The theory is that rising water temperatures are shifting ocean currents and the locations of plankton, forcing right whales outside their normal range in search of food.

Mayo thinks this is what could be spurring more right whales to converge on Cape Cod Bay, one of the few remaining plankton-rich areas along the Atlantic Coast.

Over the last decade, as the whales have shifted their migration routes, they've been exposed to increased danger.

BROWN: In 2017, we had the worst mortality event since we've been studying this species in the last 40 years.

NARRATOR: In 2019, the carcass of a female right whale known as Punctuation was found floating in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Scientists think she was about 38 years old.

Her body was towed to shore so scientists could try to determine cause of death.

HAWKINS: It's a pretty sad sight.

So those are previous entanglement scars.

Yeah.

That white there.

Previous boat strike scar here.

♪ ♪ TONYA WIMMER: This is really important work.

Everyone knows it all too well, I think, in Canada now.

So she is a very, very, very large and exceptionally well-known animal.

At this point, we do not know what killed this animal.

That is the point of this entire thing.

There will be a lot of things discussed here, especially with these guys.

The information doesn't go beyond here yet.

It is very important they get the full, complete time to think about everything.

WIMMER: There's already a lot of speculation, but at this point, we don't know.

♪ ♪ HAWKINS: This whale had a significant wound on its back.

It certainly indicates being hit by, by a large, large object.

So just will come down to the necropsy results.

You know, it's like... HAWKINS: I mean, this is certainly not the way I want to cover right whales, but it's part of the story, you know?

People need to see it.

I hope I can cover this and, and do justice for her, and, and this whale, and its life.

♪ ♪ Yeah.

Aw, (bleep).

NARRATOR: The necropsy concluded Punctuation was likely killed by a vessel strike.

She was one of ten right whales known to have died in 2019.

In 2020, Canada expanded the ten-knot speed restriction for ship traffic in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in an effort to reduce the risk of collisions with whales.

♪ ♪ Any time at the surface puts right whales at risk of being hit by a vessel.

♪ ♪ When they get together near the surface, bumping and splashing, it's not just for mating.

Whale biologists believe this frolicking behavior may also serve an important role in general social bonding and even be a form of play.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (seagulls squawking) NOËL (speaking French): MAN (on radio): Oh, yes!

Oh, yes, oh, yes, oh, yes.

NOËL: My grandfather was a cod fisherman, and then they turned out to fish snow crab.

Then my father was next in the line, and then me and my brother now are having the family business.

I have to say that I wish to not see too many whales, because it means where I fish, it will surely close in, in, no long.

NARRATOR: Based on the scarring scientists have photographed on North Atlantic right whales, they estimate that 87% have been entangled in fishing gear.

The vertical ropes that connect fishing nets and crab and lobster traps to surface buoys can become wrapped around whale fins, tails, and heads, and even get ensnared in baleen when the whales are feeding.

(motor whirring) NOËL: Once you have a vertical line and a whale in the same area... (motor whirring) ...well, there's a risk.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: In an effort to reduce entanglements, in 2018, Canada started closing fishing areas when right whales were spotted.

In some U.S. waters, including Cape Cod Bay and the southern calving grounds, all trap fishing has been suspended during the right whale migration.

(motor whirring) NOËL: When they see a right whale, they are closing an area, not only the area where the right whale is seen, but a really large area.

So in mid-May, maybe there was only eight or nine whales in the gulf, pushing fishermen out of these spaces where fishing was good to go where others fishermen are.

With that, it was creating a higher density of pots in the same area and lower catches, so it was affecting fishermen a lot.

NARRATOR: In 2020, the crab and lobster catch in Atlantic Canada and the U.S. was valued at $1.6 billion.

In many communities along the Atlantic coast, crab and lobster fisheries are the biggest employer.

While the fishing industry is aware of right whales, much of the public has never seen one, and even fewer have seen a mother with a calf.

♪ ♪ After surprising scientists by heading south to Miami, right whale mother Snow Cone and her calf were spotted in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Venice, Florida.

PITCHFORD: We didn't hear how 3560 and calf got into the Gulf of Mexico.

You know, whales follow these depth contours, and you can, might imagine them following the depth contour into the Florida Keys and eventually into the deeper water of the Gulf of Mexico.

NARRATOR: Snow Cone and her calf were only the third mom-calf pair known to have traveled into the Gulf of Mexico.

Here, boaters aren't used to seeing right whales.

And they likely don't know it's illegal to approach them within 500 yards.

ERIC WHITE: I'm a charter captain here in Venice, Florida.

I was going to put my bait traps out for a charter that I had the following day, and I hear, hear the guys on the radio talking about a big whale.

So we shot over there real quick, and sure enough, it was a, a whale.

(chuckles): Pretty big.

Just like you see on TV.

You know, the big... (imitates exhalation) ...blow of air.

(whale exhales) And they came right up to me, and checked the boat out, and the calf was kind of chilling and hanging out.

(woman laughs) WHITE (in video): She's checking the boat out.

WHITE: As she turned broadside to us... (in video): Oh, my God!

Bow to stern, bro, that thing's over 40 foot!

WHITE: ...and you could see, I mean, you could definitely see the eye.

You could see, like, her mouth and everything.

(exhales) BLAKE HALL: Me and my son and a friend of mine, we went out looking for dolphin, or mahi-mahi and wahoo.

I had heard that there were some whales in the area, but the odds of running into those two whales were just so slim, I never expected that to happen.

(laughs): It's like winning the lottery, you know?

How lucky are we, guys?

Fishing trip's so worth it.

I don't care if we catch anything or not.

(man laughing) HALL: I've seen some pretty amazing things, but that one probably tops the list.

♪ ♪ WHITE: A lot of guys who've been doing this, you know, 20, 30 years have never seen anything like that in the gulf.

HALL: Mother and her calf in such beautiful conditions, and to have my son with me, it was majestic.

♪ ♪ He'll never, ever forget that, and neither will I.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Before commercial whaling, when North Atlantic right whales likely numbered in the thousands, they thrived on both sides of the North Atlantic.

After centuries of whale hunting, the eastern Atlantic population is thought to be extinct.

Rare sightings of right whale adults off Europe's coastline are always traced back to its western population.

But in December 2020, a newborn calf was seen off the northwest coast of Africa, about 300 miles from a historical calving ground.

Is it possible that right whales are returning to this birthplace from centuries past?

PITCHFORD: A video emerged of it in very clear water, North Atlantic right whale in the Canary Islands, swimming by itself, you know, and, and they're following it.

Clear water, good conditions to see these features that would tell us that it's a very young whale.

♪ ♪ JACKSON: The callosity that we could see and the size of the animal all seemed like a young animal in the early weeks.

Calves are not identifiable, especially when they're that young.

Even if that calf's mother was nearby somewhere and the both of them come back over here, the chances of us being able to match it are pretty slim.

NARRATOR: Why the mother gave birth here, so far from the only current calving ground, remains a mystery.

♪ ♪ Back on the North American side of the Atlantic, scientists have been trying to figure out why right whales are returning here, to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, each summer, instead of their old feeding ground in the Bay of Fundy, 200 miles to the south.

The answer could be key to understanding the impacts of climate change on marine life.

Moira Brown is a leading right whale scientist.

Oh, I hate it when the whales don't get the memo.

Yeah, coming up on seven.

We've seen quite a lot of whales on about a six-minute dive time, so we were optimistic this whale would do the same, but... WOMAN: Whale's up!

Whale's up.

BROWN: Okay.

WOMAN: I shot it.

BROWN: Shot it!

Keep going, keep going.

♪ ♪ Head's up, about to fluke.

Fluke.

NARRATOR: Since 2018, Martin Noël has accompanied the scientists on their research trips in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, chartering his boat after the close of the snow crab season.

BROWN (on radio): 11:00, the whale did a backflip.

(murmuring) Coming out of the water backwards.

Oh, there's a...

Belly up.

BROWN (on radio): You could see the flippers.

NOËL: Flippers-- that whale is having fun.

NOËL: Doing the survey with the scientists, you get to be curious about which one it is, and it's interesting.

BROWN (on radio): Okay, we're going to stop here.

Copy that.

There seems to be a lot of whales in the area here, but there's, it's only a third of the population that's here, not all of it.

It's, maybe, they see 140 individuals.

The right whale has such a major impact on our fishery that I think that there's no way other than learning a lot about it to maybe help the situation.

♪ ♪ Crane down!

NARRATOR: Biological oceanographer Kim Davies is the chief scientist on this voyage.

She studies foraging hotspots, the plankton-rich zones that sustain virtually all ocean life.

DAVIES: The thing about right whales that's so strange, they move around a lot in the ocean, and yet they seem to predictably return to the same area every year once they have discovered it, so there is some level of predictability.

The North Atlantic right whale feeds on a rice-sized piece of fat-rich zooplankton called a copepod.

When we used to do these studies in the Bay of Fundy, we'd be coming up with our nets absolutely full.

Here we're missing something.

NARRATOR: So far, even though the whales are visiting the Gulf of St. Lawrence during the feeding season, scientists have been unable to find the high concentrations of copepods that the whales used to feed on in the Bay of Fundy and the Gulf of Maine.

DAVIES: Here we are in an area that's clearly important to them for foraging, but we don't really have a very good sense yet of what they're actually eating.

NARRATOR: When their favorite food source is scarce, right whales have been known to switch to a different prey and eat less nourishing species of plankton to survive.

For the first time, Davies and her team are equipped with a sounding device that will allow them to detect prey within three feet of the sea floor, where they suspect the right whales are feeding.

(motor whirring) MAN: Crane out.

Crane left.

DAVIES: These questions are really, really important to get answers to... MAN: Crane down.

DAVIES: ...because the right whales are here.

This area is important to them and we want to know why.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: After sampling several more locations, Davies and her team discover that the right whale's preferred prey, a species of copepod, is concentrated near the sea floor.

Whether there are enough copepods in the Gulf of St. Lawrence to sustain right whales is unknown.

Studies of other whale species have shown that healthy populations can adapt to changing food supplies and increase their birthrates after a few low reproductive years.

But the right whale population has not rebounded since its calf count started to decline in 2010.

♪ ♪ MICHAEL MOORE: I thought back to animal husbandry 101, which, as dairy farmers know full well, that if you don't feed the cow, she's not going to get pregnant.

One of the ways that you assess the fitness of a cow to get pregnant is to look at its body fat.

NARRATOR: Michael Moore is a whale trauma expert at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

His 2020 study shows that North Atlantic right whale mothers on average weigh 21% less than their close relative the southern right whale.

MOORE: Photogrammetry has been around for a long time.

The science and the physics of it is very clearly worked out.

A flat image, the camera's horizontal level, and you have an accurate measurement of the altitude, and with that, you do the math.

(camera clicks) That gives you a good chance of estimating the volume of the animal, and hence its body condition.

(camera clicks) If you look at them from the side, you can see these dips and hollows behind the neck, where they've lost that roll of fat that the southern right whales have, what we call the neck roll.

You know, I spent time working on southern right whales in 1997.

They're fit, fat, and happy.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ The southern right whales tend to be clean, unscarred, and just beautiful animals.

The reason why North Atlantic right whales have a body condition deficit is twofold.

The basis of it, for sure, is, they need more food to eat.

And with climate change, there's been a wholesale change in the availability of the food, but the second side of it is the energetic costs of entanglement.

♪ ♪ If the cost of moving through the water has been increased by the rope that you're dragging around, that's going to be a significant problem.

It takes, on average, six months for a right whale to succumb to chronic entanglement.

♪ ♪ They're alive, in pain, for six months.

Those guys are tough mothers.

They really are.

Give nature a chance and it will come right back.

That's what we're asking for, is to give the right whale a chance to show what it's made of.

NARRATOR: Three months after Snow Cone and her calf were seen by boaters in the Gulf of Mexico, the calf's body was spotted floating off the coast of New Jersey.

♪ ♪ Veterinarian Sarah Sharp was brought in to determine cause of death.

SHARP: Unfortunately, a lot of the necropsies I've done have, have been really young animals, two years or less.

♪ ♪ And all of those animals have been human-impact deaths.

But I think, I think that 3560's calf was the youngest of those that I had necropsied.

About five or six months at that point, yeah.

Young-- little baby.

♪ ♪ ELLIS: When I read the news that Snow Cone's calf had died, I mean, I actually cried.

It was like losing a friend, and now it's sort of hard to look at the video from last year and the pictures of last year.

It felt like losing a friend-- it was really, really sad.

♪ ♪ The whale had been hit once, was injured, starting to heal, and then the next, fatal blow came.

NARRATOR: Snow Cone's calf was hit twice over several weeks.

The first collision left propeller chop wounds from the tip of his nose to the mid-thorax and a deep rudder wound along his abdomen.

The second vessel strike cut across the calf's tail.

You kind of broke my heart a little bit.

I didn't know that calf passed away.

That sucks.

(chuckles) I'm sorry.

(breathes deeply) (clears throat) ♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Both Canada and the U.S. have a ten-knot seasonal speed restriction in some right whale habitats.

But as of 2022, in some areas, compliance is voluntary, and does not apply to vessels under 65 feet.

Nine months after the calf died, rescuers in Cape Cod Bay responded to a call about Snow Cone.

Maria Harvey is an entanglement responder with the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Going in, what we knew was, there was rope coming out of the mouth, two trailing lines, with a possible twist.

NARRATOR: Entanglements that involve a whale's mouth can interfere with feeding.

If the rope becomes wrapped around a fin or tail, it will tighten over time.

SCOTT LANDRY: A whale is essentially moving 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

And so over time, that rope can saw, certainly, through skin, through blubber, through muscle, and even into bone.

NARRATOR: Scott Landry leads the center's entanglement response, part of a network of seven teams situated between Florida and New Brunswick that record about 36 entanglements in the North Atlantic each year.

LANDRY: Essentially, what I was trying to do was making sure that we weren't running over any of her entangling lines, but also keeping the people on the bow as close to her as possible so that they could throw the grappling hook into her entanglement.

LANDRY: Good!

HARVEY: Oftentimes, we will add flotation to keep them at the surface.

LANDRY: Put it there!

HARVEY: And that's called kegging, the exact same things that the whalers used to do.

LANDRY: Now, once that buoy was affixed to her entanglement, her behavior changed entirely.

HARVEY: Unfortunately, when an animal is entangled, they will try and bolt away from you.

It could just go in any direction.

Totally erratic.

BOB LYNCH: It's pretty rough what we do.

They're just out in the wild living their lives, and then we're harassing them the best we can to sort of improve and give them a better chance of life.

LANDRY: I see it!

NARRATOR: From 2017 to 2022, scientists have documented 34 North Atlantic right whale deaths and 20 injuries expected to cause death between Florida and the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Among the cases where the cause was known, 13 of the deaths or serious injuries resulted from vessel strikes and 27 from entanglement.

The real culprit in this is rope.

It is not a particular target species.

It's not a country.

It is rope in the places where these animals have to live.

At this point, it makes it very difficult for a right whale, or almost any whale, to move through their environments without becoming entangled.

LANDRY: Snout!

♪ ♪ LANDRY: And any measure that would reduce the amount of rope would benefit whales.

I'm talking about reducing rope, not reducing fishing.

LANDRY: I cut it, I cut it, I cut it!

LYNCH: Our goal was just to cut the rope sort of shorter, and sort of see if she can then shed it on her own.

What I'm hoping to see the next time someone sees her is that there's no rope left at all.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Rescuers removed more than 100 feet of trailing line from Snow Cone.

In the Gulf of St. Lawrence, biologists are witnessing for the first time a right whale that has just become entangled.

Only four hours earlier, they photographed this five-year-old male gear-free.

♪ ♪ Senior scientist Moira Brown is a member of New Brunswick's Campobello Whale Rescue Team.

BROWN: Oh, yeah, it's really got a lot of red on its tail.

Looks sore.

So I see lines in front of the blowholes, behind the blowholes, two more.

There is trailing line with a dirty white buoy.

So this whale is thrashing too much and too unsettled to put anybody in a small boat near this whale.

So that's off the plate.

What I'm thinking is, is a telemetry buoy, the green buoy that we attach.

We'll get Guy to grapple, and we'll get some of the other trained people to belay the line.

I know Kelsey and I are trained.

Okay, let's have Gina get the drone up so that we can look at it from here.

NOËL (on radio): Yeah, that's a good idea, I think, copy.

BROWN (loudly): Ready to launch?

GINA: Ready!

BROWN: Launching!

♪ ♪ (whale groans) ♪ ♪ Okay, there you go.

So is there anything...

Doesn't look like there's anything behind that.

We can't really see the trailing line.

It looks like there's two lines coming out of the right-hand side of the mouth.

One's going over the right-hand side of the tail.

One's going over the left-hand side of the tail.

So it's like she has it through her mouth and all coming out the right-hand side.

♪ ♪ I'm trying to figure if there's a bitter end here.

♪ ♪ (whale groans) Trailing line.

Okay, (inaudible), we've got the trailing line.

Okay, that's good.

See it there.

That's what we want.

See, it's going...

I see it.

♪ ♪ BROWN: Gina got a really good visual on the trailing line.

It looks like it's coming out of the right fluke blade, out from underneath the right fluke blade at times, but it looks like it's staying pretty close to the surface, so it does mean that we should have an option.

I kind of would just...

I mean, it's tough to watch, but I kind of just want to give it a little time to tire itself out and settle.

(whale groans) I have never, in all of my years of seeing entangled right whales, I have never seen an animal react so violently.

♪ ♪ NOËL: When they find a whale entangled in the gear, and it's in the gulf, and it's in the snow crab gear, they say, "Well, it's, it's the snow crab's fault," and it's hard to say it's not when you see a buoy that comes from a crab pot.

NARRATOR: In an effort to make crab and lobster fishing safer for whales, engineers have been working on new technology designed to dramatically reduce the amount of rope required to fish with traps.

Martin Noël is part of a group of fishers testing new technology which operates without a vertical line in the water column.

Instead, the system is designed to keep the trap's buoy and line submerged on the sea floor, attached to a long line of traps known as a trawl, until fishers are ready to haul their catch.

NOËL: Two things we want to try here: is the pop-up system working and can we fish with trawls?

NARRATOR: An acoustic signal sent from the boat through the water triggers the buoy's release and floats the rope to the surface.

I can now press recover, and it's going to send a signal, a command, to recover.

When you release that, it pops up.

The buoy pops up.

♪ ♪ Show us the buoy.

MAN (in French): NOËL (in French, on speaker): (crew speaking French) NOËL (on speaker): ♪ ♪ NOËL (on speaker): Ouais.

(Noël repeats) NOËL: ♪ ♪ NOËL: When you release that, it pops up, the buoy pops up.

(crew speaking French) Okay.

NOËL: And on that lobster cage, attached, you got ten pots, one after the other.

It's very different because once you catch the first buoy, you cannot stop.

You're attached to the bottom.

You got to be really careful.

♪ ♪ It's positive, because at first, when we heard about those pop-up buoys, we said, "Hey, impossible."

You know, "Push a button, and a few seconds after, you see a buoy-- it can't work."

But now, we say, "Hey, well, it exists."

The next step is for us to see if we can work safely and efficiently with those mechanism.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: As of 2022, more than 60 lobster and crab boats fished with pop-up gear in Canada and the U.S., and dozens more are awaiting approval for use in 2023.

As the U.S. and Canada move toward stricter regulations-- closing fishing zones, mandating the use of ropes that break away more easily, and possibly expensive pop-up systems-- fishers see increasing challenges to their livelihoods, practically and economically.

In late 2021, Snow Cone was spotted with a second calf.

She is the first known right whale to give birth while entangled.

Seven months later, she was sighted, still entangled, but without her calf.

Several weeks after that, she was seen with a new entanglement and in poor health.

♪ ♪ (camera clicks) Oh, there they are.

(man speaking indistinctly) Just for a sec.

NARRATOR: 15 calves were born in the 2022 season.

Scientists calculate that for right whales to recover, about 30 calves need to be born each year, and injuries and deaths must be dramatically reduced.

MAYO: I view them as a mystery.

They're rife with questions, and the answers are hard-won.

NARRATOR: A year after he was spotted entangled, five-year-old male 4615 has not been seen again.

Five, four, three, two, one.

♪ ♪ HAWKINS: If these animals are present in our lives through media, through storytelling, when we talk about regulation changes, when we talk about changes in fisheries, in shipping... (straining): Un, deux, trois.

HAWKINS: ...those changes are going to be more acceptable to a knowledgeable public, to a knowledgeable industry sector.

ZOODSMA: When I first got in this, I thought... (slaps): "I'm going, I'm going to have, I'm going to be part of all of the answers," you know?

"And, and I'm going to work with government agencies, and we're going to get this done."

And I guess I'm a slow learner, but after 30 years, it's dawned on me that governments can't do this on their own.

It's going to take everybody.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪