Behind the Scenes: Inside Tech Efforts to Protect Right Whales from Fishing Gear

It’s been a dark decade for the endangered North Atlantic right whale. More than 40 of these ocean giants have perished since 2017, mainly due to two human-driven factors: vessel strikes and getting tangled up in fishing gear. 

But this week, scientists announced a rare bit of good news for the struggling species. In 2023, the right whale population size climbed to 372 individuals—a slight uptick from 2022, according to the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium, a scientific data-sharing body. 

The modest increase indicates a leveling off of the sharp decline seen in prior years—with some caveats. The estimate includes new calves before they are officially cataloged for the first time; recalculating 2022 in the same way updates that figure to 367, about a dozen whales more than the earlier number. The new numbers also do not reflect the five documented deaths or the four lost calves that scientists presume have died in 2024 so far, the third highest annual mortality count on record. 

“While the whales may be adapting to a rapidly changing environment, the continued high level of mortality and serious injury clearly shows we must continue to adapt and evolve our management,” Philip Hamilton, a scientist at New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life and a member of the consortium, said in a statement. 

To prevent entanglements, the federal government has enacted seasonal fishing closures in parts of New England, which limit lobster harvesting during the whales’ migration season. In recent years, a new technology known as on-demand gear has emerged to minimize rope from lobster traps and help fishers get back on the water during these closures—without putting whales at risk. But many lobstermen see the technology as another threat to their industry rather than a solution.

In May, I visited Cape Cod to see this “ropeless” gear in action and talk to some of the main players in these efforts, which you can read about in a piece I published earlier this week. Today, I’m diving into the process behind reporting this story and what’s at stake for the right whales and lobstermen.

Entanglements, in a Nutshell: North Atlantic right whales migrate through the East Coast of North America to breed and follow their favorite food—tiny crustaceans called copepods, abundant in the Gulf of Maine. But these waters come with risks. Each year, the whales pass through lobster fishing areas in Massachusetts and Maine, where they may struggle to avoid copious amounts of gear and traps, research shows. 

Over the past decade, at least 10 right whales have died from entanglements with fishing gear. However, reports suggest that 85 percent of right whales have scars from an entanglement at some point in their lives. Studies show that even temporary rope incidents can cause infections, increased stress, starvation and disruption to the ability to breed. 

The situation came to a head in 2017, when an unprecedented 17 whales died in U.S. and Canadian waters. Research shows that waters warmed by climate change shifted copepod distribution, and whales likely followed their food into the new areas—which had little to no protection from fishing gear and ship traffic. I learned more about the boat collision side of this issue for a story I covered last year. 

My new reporting underscores that more fishery closures are likely—and that new gear could be a workaround.

Gear Trials and Tribulations: Over the past two years, the federal government and conservation organizations have poured millions of dollars into research efforts to perfect “ropeless” on-demand gear. 

The traditional lobster traps that sit on the seafloor are connected to the surface by a line of rope attached to a floating buoy. But on-demand gear allows lobstermen to sink their traps to the seafloor without the rope tethered to the surface, giving whales a clearer path through fishery waters. Then lobstermen can use a device to call these wireless traps back up to the surface with their catch. Sometimes they can even be activated by an iPhone. This gear is not yet legal for commercial use, but fishers can test it out with an experimental permit. 

For my story, I visited the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s “gear library” in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, which holds more than 500 on-demand systems that approved lobstermen can try in certain areas during seasonal closures. I then joined NOAA scientists and tech experts to test out the gear at sea with Rob Martin, a Massachusetts lobsterman who was brought on by the agency to help advise on how more whale-friendly gear could work in practice for fishers. 

It was a rainy, gray day on the waters off Cape Cod’s Sandwich Marina, which really added to the New England vibe (and completely soaked my clothes). The boat was controlled chaos as everyone bustled around to look more closely at each part of the on-demand gear process, batting questions back and forth over the loud grumble of the diesel engine. The excitement was palpable when the first trap—invisible in the depths below—popped back up to the surface.

During this year’s trial across three restricted areas, harvesters completed 900 hauls using on-demand gear, with an 85 percent success rate. NOAA and developers are still working to fix tech glitches and lower costs. They also must contend with a different but perhaps more daunting barrier: backlash from lobstermen. 

Mixed Reviews: For many, lobster is synonymous with Maine. Each year, the state harvests a whopping 100 million pounds of lobster, which contributes around half a billion dollars to the Maine economy. But one walk through the streets of Provincetown at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in May showed me how crucial the crustacean is for Massachusetts as well. Lobster dishes or souvenirs were advertised at a bevy of restaurants and shops around town.

I talked to several lobstermen, and they told me how important it is to bring in high catches each season to stay afloat. Pride for their jobs shone through during the interviews, as did fear for the future of their industry. Over the years, industry groups have filed lawsuits to try to block seasonal closures and other whale-related regulations, which they say has come at a cost to lobster fisheries. 

Now, many fishers are also speaking out against on-demand gear. Jeff Souza, a Cape Cod lobsterman, told me that he doesn’t believe manufacturers will be able to make “ropeless” gear viable, in part due to its expense. Currently, on-demand gear can cost thousands of dollars per unit, compared to the roughly $200 traditional lobster pots and traps on the market. 

However, a NOAA official told me that the agency isn’t going to require fishermen to use ropeless gear. It’s a carrot, not a stick: Using it could be the way to keep catching lobsters in areas closed for fishing. Over the next few years, a rulemaking body will start working on new regulations to protect right whales that could include more large seasonal closures, but they wouldn’t go into effect until around the end of the decade at the earliest.  

Earlier this week, representatives from research and conservation organizations, independent contractors, shipping and fishing industries, and U.S. and Canadian government agencies met for two meetings in Providence, Rhode Island, to discuss the latest updates in right-whale recovery efforts. I asked Mark Baumgartner, a scientist from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, to share his takeaway on the conferences. He told me about a U.S. fisher who participated in one of the gear trials this year, who “remarked that he was able to pay his mortgage and his kid’s college tuition bill because he could fish in a closed area this past winter.”

But there are still challenges ahead, he added. For example, without a buoy, “ropeless” gear is nearly impossible to see from the surface, which can lead to fishing lines and traps getting tangled up with each other—otherwise known as gear conflict. Several groups are developing apps to help digitally mark gear, while Baumgartner is working on possible methods to build out a system that would enable the devices to ping their exact, real-time location underwater.

“There are several visions of how gear conflict could be resolved that involve both proprietary approaches and open standards, but the community doesn’t have the authority to choose among these, only government does,” Baumgartner told me over email. “The decision on how to proceed will impact a lot of aspects of on-demand fishing, and the sooner those decisions are made, the faster we can all move toward viable commercial fishing with on-demand gear.” 

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