The Marine Animal Entanglement Response team (MAER) at the Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) responded to an entangled North Atlantic right whale over the weekend. The whale, a yearling, was found in Cape Cod Bay on Saturday, with fishing gear in tow. By Sunday the MAER team managed to remove a significant amount of the gear.
Late Saturday morning, January 17, 2026, the MAER hotline received a report from a Plymouth resident who was watching whales through a spotting scope. One of the whales they were watching had a buoy in tow.
The MAER team responded from Provincetown aboard their vessel Ibis, and found a young right whale with fishing rope wrapped around the base of its tail, but fully mobile and able to swim without difficulty. With wind and sea state worsening the team chose to outfit the entanglement on the whale with a tracking buoy, hoping to track the whale overnight, with better sea conditions forecasted the following day. From Saturday night into Sunday morning the whale moved out of the bay and traveled east, away from Cape Cod.
On Sunday, the MAER team headed out of Provincetown and caught up with the whale east of the town of Truro. With limited daylight and poor weather, the team worked quickly to attempt to slow the whale by adding large buoys and a sea anchor to its entanglement. Slowing the whale might have allowed the team to use a hook-shaped knife at the end of a long pole to cut away the wraps of rope around the base of its tail. Instead, a portion of the fishing gear broke, and was recovered by the team, along with the tracking buoy.
The whale sped off with wraps of rope around its tail. There is a chance that the whale could shed the remaining entanglement. Follow-up sightings of the whale will help with further assessments.
The New England Aquarium confirmed the identity of the whale as the 2025 calf of the right whale, Monarch. The whale was sighted by the CCS aerial survey team a week earlier in Cape Cod Bay. At that time the whale was not entangled and was feeding alongside other right whales.
Many thanks go to the Plymouth resident for promptly reporting the entanglement and to Whale and Dolphin Conservation and the Massachusetts Environmental Police for their support in this case.
Boaters are urged to report any entanglement sightings of whales, sea-turtles or other marine animals to the MAER team (1-800-900-3622) or the US Coast Guard on VHF 16, and to stand by the animal at a safe distance until trained responders arrive.
CCS disentanglement work is supported in part by grants from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (MA-DMF), the Massachusetts Environmental Trust, and private foundations and donors. All disentanglement activities are conducted under a federal permit authorized by NOAA.
Photo above: A member of the MAER team uses a grappling hook and rope to affix a tracking buoy to the entanglement on the whale. CCS image, taken under NOAA permit 24359.