Fishing gear entanglement is a major cause of whale suffering and mortality worldwide, requiring urgent action on gear modification and whale disentanglement response.
Whale entanglement causes some of the most prolonged and severe suffering documented in any wild animal. An entangled whale may drag heavy fishing gear for hundreds of miles over months, the ropes cutting progressively deeper into flesh as the animal struggles. Exhaustion, infection, and starvation follow. Calves entangled early in life may never reach maturity. Even whales successfully disentangled bear lasting scars and physiological damage. The scale of the problem demands systemic solutions including mandatory ropeless gear adoption in critical habitat areas, not just expanded disentanglement response.