Low-tech methods pay off for man on mission to free whales trapped in nets
Published Wednesday July 23rd, 2008
ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - Wayne Ledwell leans over the side of his small inflatable boat and sticks his silver-haired head into the waters of Placentia Bay.
Through the lens of his mask, he can see a tangle of ropes, netting and buoys.
He's so fixated on the colourful web of nylon that he barely notices the dark, 40-tonne humpback whale - bobbing occasionally to the surface to release a plume of breath - within arm's reach.
After nearly three hours of painstaking effort, Ledwell releases the last piece of rope that had snarled the whale and the majestic beast slowly swims away.
Meanwhile, fisherman William White has been anxiously waiting nearby.
Once he gets his gill nets back, he can get back to work catching his quota of cod off Southeast Bight.
It's another successful day at the office - in this case, at sea - for Ledwell, 54. The whale is alive and White has his fishing gear - relatively undamaged - plus nearly 270 kilograms of cod.
Ledwell has never kept exact records, but he figures he's done this about 200 times.
He's also never drawn the spotlight like his more celebrated mentor, Jon Lien, the former head of the now-defunct Whale Research Group at Memorial University in St. John's.
People often mistake Ledwell for Lien when he shows up to release a whale.
Ledwell doesn't take it as a slight. If anything, it's a compliment, he said.
The two worked together for about a decade during the 1980s and 1990s, and Ledwell learned his craft from Lien.
Lien released his first whale 30 years ago, and pioneered techniques to deal with entrapments.
It wasn't uncommon for Lien, Ledwell and other members of the group to release more than 100 stranded whales each summer.
The entanglement problem went away after the cod fishery closed in the early 1990s, but Ledwell said the issue is resurfacing as whales encounter more and more gill nets, especially off the south and west coasts.
Whales are also getting caught in gear used to harvest snow crab, and Ledwell has travelled hundreds of kilometres offshore to free an animal.
Lien has since retired and was recently made a member of the Order of Canada for his conservation work.
Ledwell toils on in relative obscurity as the head of a new group, Whale Release and Strandings, which isn't affiliated with the university.
The group is funded by the federal Fisheries Department and Ledwell releases an average of 30 whales each year.
Despite his many years of experience, Ledwell said he still gets a rush every time the phone rings.
He said every entrapment is different, and he approaches each situation with a healthy respect for the whale and its power, and an understanding of what the fisherman has at stake.
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