Humpback whale populations have recovered significantly since the whaling ban, but entanglement, vessel strikes, and acoustic pollution continue to cause welfare harms.
Humpback whales that survive entanglement in fishing gear face welfare harms lasting weeks to months. Entangled gear causes wounds from the cutting action of rope and drag from floating equipment that exhausts the animal. Long-term entanglements cause starvation and infection. Disentanglement teams provide welfare relief to individual animals but cannot address the scale of the problem without reducing entanglement incidence through gear modification.