Freeing a Hog-Tied Humpback Near Glacier Bay, October 2023

Humpback season was ending in Icy Strait, Alaska, when the call came on Tuesday, October 10, 2023: two local residents, Sesylia Hazen and Kamille Williams, reported a whale near the Gustavus dock trailing two buoys, making unusual sounds and struggling to move. Park Service whale biologists Janet Neilson and Chris Gabriele alerted colleagues in NOAA's Alaska Large Whale Entanglement Response network.

Sizing it up

Staff hurried to the dock with spotting scopes and long lenses. By early afternoon two trained responders — ranger Bethany Robichaud and wildlife biologist Tania Lewis — were out on the patrol boat Talus with ranger Alison Richardson. (The network has trained responders in Alaska communities since 2005 and has about 150 active members, several at Glacier Bay.)

They found a humpback swimming in tight clockwise circles, at times anchored to the seafloor — by what turned out to be a 300-pound crab pot on 450 feet of heavy line. The pot's owner, who had set it near Pleasant Island, said it had vanished between Saturday and Sunday morning, so the whale had been caught for at least three days.

The entangled whale surfaces, the two buoys beside it. NPS photo / T. Lewis, NOAA MMHSRP Permit No. 24359

NOAA's Alaska entanglement response coordinator, Sadie Wright, authorized a rescue. With gales forecast and short days, there was one calm window — the next day.

The entangled humpback near Pleasant Island, Icy Strait, October 11, 2023. Footage by Sean Neilson, under NOAA Fisheries' Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program Permit No. 24359.

Assembling a team

By luck, disentanglement expert Dr. Fred Sharpe of the Alaska Whale Foundation had just reached Juneau and could fly to Gustavus. He led a team of Neilson, Gabriele, Lewis and Robichaud, with captain Justin Smith on the NPS research vessel Capelin. A licensed drone pilot, Sean Neilson, volunteered to film from above — imagery that proved essential to working out how the whale was tangled.

On the flight from Juneau, pilot Brandon Warren of Alaska Seaplanes offered to watch for the whale, and a passenger, Marc Heifetz of the USGS, spotted the buoys close to Pleasant Island's shore, about a mile from the day before — saving precious time. By 11 a.m. the team was with the whale, towing a small NPS inflatable, in flat calm, sunny weather after weeks of storms.

Hog-tied

The whale could barely move. It dove for 7–9 minutes and surfaced for only about 30 seconds, circling clockwise. The drone showed why: a loop of line through its mouth ran to a heavy tangle at its tail. The whale was hog-tied, its body bent sharply sideways. (A healed propeller scar on its back was an old, unrelated injury.)

For the first hour it dodged the rescuers, then grew used to the inflatable. Seizing a few key moments, the team made cuts with a special knife on a very long pole, keeping their distance, and kept in touch by phone with Ed Lyman of the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary, NOAA's regional entanglement response coordinator and one of the world's leading disentanglement experts.

They worked until the light was gone. By the end, drone and boat photos confirmed no line left around the tail and the mouth loop cut. The whale kept its bent posture at first — biologists expect it straightened once it could move freely — and after the last cut it disappeared, a good sign it could swim away fast.

Cutting the whale free, October 11, 2023. Footage by Sean Neilson, under NOAA MMHSRP Permit No. 24359.

The end of the day. NPS photo / C. Gabriele

Who was it?

From the photos, Janet Neilson identified the whale as SEAK-5490 — new to the Glacier Bay area in 2023, but seen elsewhere in Southeast Alaska in 2021 and 2022, and first documented by the Alaska Whale Foundation in Frederick Sound. A drone measurement the previous fall put it at 32.5 feet (9.9 m) — a juvenile, estimated at 3–4 years old. Knowing its identity means its survival can be confirmed; you can follow it on Happywhale.

SEAK-5490 in Glacier Bay, July 2023. NPS photo / C. Gabriele, NMFS Scientific Research Permit No. 27027

If you see an entangled whale

• Do not try to cut it free — for your safety and the whale's. It takes special tools and training to remove all the dangerous gear.
• Don't cut off trailing buoys: leaving the lethal line on the body while removing buoys makes the whale harder to find again and impossible to fit with a satellite tag buoy that lets responders track it.
• In Alaska, call the 24-hour stranding hotline at 877-925-7773, or the U.S. Coast Guard on VHF channel 16, for any stranded, injured, entangled or dead marine mammal.
• To train as a responder, start with NOAA's online first responder training.

Sources

Based on "Humpback Whale Freed from Entanglement Near Glacier Bay," National Park Service, Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The response was carried out under NOAA Fisheries' Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program Permit No. 24359. Its aerial and boat photographs and videos by volunteer drone pilot Sean Neilson are not reproduced. The Park Service's films, lost when the page was imported, are restored from its page (2026-09-27).