CHATHAM, Mass. — August 10, 2012 — In 19 years of lobstering, Ben Bergquist has seen plenty of whales but never one entangled in fishing gear. That doesn't mean he hasn't experienced the effect of those tragedies at sea.
He spent $20,000 a few years ago to comply with regulations meant to reduce the chances a loop of rope would get caught in a whale's mouth, front flippers or tail.
But he knows that isn't enough.
On Thursday night, Bergquist joined 50 other fishermen at the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's Association in becoming certified in the first of five levels of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's whale disentanglement program. Each level comes with an increased level of responsibility, training and skill.
While there was little hands-on training and a lot of information on how the program works, Bergquist and others felt it was important to show they are willing to help protect the region's whale populations, many of which are either threatened or potentially facing extinction.
"I think it's become kind of a necessity to take a proactive approach," Bergquist said. "We don't want to entangle whales. We're just guys with families trying to make a living."
NOAA looks to certify professional mariners like fishermen, marine patrol officers, naturalists and others with boating experience at that first level to put more people on the water who know what to do and what not to do.
At the top level are people such as Scott Landry, director of the whale rescue program at the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies, who cuts the lines and frees snarled whales.
What not to do, Landry told fishermen at Thursday's session, is to attempt to free the whale, even if they have the best of intentions.
In a whale rescue earlier this year off Province-
town, someone attempted to free a small whale by cutting through the line off its tail that anchored it to the bottom by a series of lobster pots. If the person had been successful, a whale encased in line from nose to tail would have been freed, and difficult to find.
At the entry level, fishermen would be expected to report a whale in trouble and stand by the animal until certified rescuers arrive and assess the type of gear and the extent of entanglement.
Their expertise in knowing what kind of a whale had become ensnared in could actually prove more important than freeing it, Jamison Smith, NOAA's large whale disentanglement coordinator for the Northeast, told the group because it could show the effectiveness of gear changes or lead to other whale-saving innovations.
Chatham lobsterman Will Martin said he thought the session was informative. He'd never seen the graphic images of what happens to whales that are cut and weighted down by lines and gear.
"We've been doing this already. It just makes it official," said Jim Nash, a Chatham gillnet fisherman who helped put the training session together.
Nash sits on a NOAA whale advisory committee that helps come up with solutions to the problem. He said fishermen are working to help fix the problem of whales becoming caught in their gear.
Read the full story in the Cape Cod Times