Oregon Coast Experts, Scientists Free Humpback Whale Snagged by Fishing Gear in a Disturbing Way

Published 08/05/2026 at 8:55 a.m.
By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff

(Newport, Oregon) – A particularly brutal injury to a humpback whale has hopefully been taken care of by regional experts after it was caught in fishing gear that may have been lost. (Photos and video combined effort of Oregon Coast Aquarium, Oregon State University Marine Mammal Institute and Cascadia Research Collective- see video near bottom)

The young humpback whale was was freed July 26 after a coordinated rescue effort about 20 miles off the Oregon coast, ending a three-day response that involved federal specialists, local fishermen, and the U.S. Coast Guard. The gear had forced the whale’s jaw permanently open, leaving it unable to feed and unlikely to survive without aid from humans.

So that's just what a large group of them succeeded in doing. Eventually. It took some trying, however.

The whale was first spotted July 23 by Oregon State University research assistant Craig Hayslip during a Coast Guard helicopter survey. He reported the sighting to NOAA’s West Coast Entanglement Hotline. The gear had visibly done some horrific things to its jaw, seen even from above.

When responders reached the animal, they found the line stretched deep and tight into the water column, anchored roughly 400 feet to the seafloor. Even with cutting tools and a small inflatable boat provided by the Coast Guard, the team could not reach or move the gear.

“We realized if a whale couldn’t move it, then we humans weren’t going to move it, either,” Hayslip said. The crew returned to Newport to regroup, then waited out a day of rough weather before trying again.

On July 26, local fisherman Poggy Lapham joined the operation aboard his vessel, the F/V Michele Ann. Using the boat’s hydraulic winch, the crew hauled the gear off the bottom, giving entanglement experts Doug Sandilands and Jenn Tackaberry of Cascadia Research Collective the access they needed to cut the whale free.

In all, responders recovered more than 3,000 feet of line, five sablefish pot traps, individual Dungeness crab traps, and DNA samples from the gear to help identify the whale’s population. An online photo catalog later confirmed the whale had been previously documented in British Columbia in 2024.

Jim Rice, who manages the Oregon Marine Mammal Stranding Network for OSU, said the whale’s jaw was “wide open beyond anything you would expect to see,” an unnatural angle that was disturbing.

See the video: graphic image caution.

NOAA Fisheries is working with gear owners to determine whether the equipment was derelict or lost.

“We disentangled the whale safely, got all the gear back, and had great collaboration with the fishing industry,” said Lauren Saez, who helped coordinate the response for NOAA Fisheries’ West Coast Region. “Additionally, we got whale DNA samples from the gear to help identify which population it belongs to. All this information is crucial to understand what happened and what we can do to help prevent future entanglements.”

There is an even sadder - even horror movie-like - end to this. Michael Milstein, spokesman for NOAA Fisheries in the Northwest, told Oregon Coast Beach Connection the whale seemed uninjured once it was freed. There was some damaged tissue where the rope was.

However, it ends on a gruesome note: "but its jaw remained wide open with no sign the whale could close it to eat, for example."

From 2025: Oregon Coast Humpback Whale: Rescue Fails, Euthanized - Officials: stay away from this site in north Yachats

Humpback whales are among the species most frequently entangled along the West Coast, with more than 30 confirmed cases last year. Officials emphasize that only trained and authorized teams should attempt to free an entangled whale.

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