May 18, 2026 — A humpback whale entangled in fishing gear was spotted Friday west of Winchester Bay, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife said Wednesday.
Justin Ainsworth, a marine resources program manager with the state agency, said in an email that the gear has a commercial crab buoy tag, but its owner hasn’t been identified because officials haven’t been able to make out the vessel name and permit number.
The whale, Ainsworth said, “appeared to be in good health and was quite mobile.”
He said the National Marine Fisheries Service is ultimately responsible for “gear attributions and entanglement accounting,” but that he expects the gear to be linked to the Oregon commercial Dungeness crab fishery. If that’s the case, he said, it would be the second confirmed humpback entanglement in fishery gear in 2026.