Bored and socially distant? Hie you to the nearest body of water and start picking up discarded and derelict fishing gear! The life you save will probably be Wild.

Fish hooks and fishing line cause uncountable wildlife injuries. The toll fishing gear takes on marine birds, reptiles, and mammals (not to mention the targeted species!) numbers in the thousands along the California coast alone each year. (see study here) According to the Humane Society of the United States (link here) over a million marine animals are killed each year by “longline” fishing at sea.

From “ghost nets” that sweep silently through the sea, lost from their vessel, killing whales, dolphins, sea turtles, seabirds, fish and more, to wads of monofilament line that litter the shores of rivers and lakes ensnaring chickadees and egrets, this pollution problem is a source of untold, unknowable suffering for our wild neighbors.

In the last 8 years we’ve treated nearly 200 animals at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center/bax who’ve been injured or entangled by discarded fishing gear. We have no idea how many, locally, are injured and never rescued, but that number is significantly higher than the relatively lucky few who are found and treated.

Sadly in the last week we’ve had three patients entangled in fishing line with hook injuries – a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias), and two Western Gulls (Larus occidentalis).

In the case of the heron, we received a call in the late morning that one of these unmistakable large birds was struggling on the bank of the Mad River where it flows through Blue Lake, a few miles inland from Humboldt Bay. When staff arrived on the scene, they found the heron, entangled in line.

The rescued is heron is taken back to the vehicle.

Fortunately, the injuries the heron suffered were minimal, within a few days the bold and pointed argument he made was let me out of here or somebody gets it. Other than imminent death by entaglement, there was nothing at all wrong – a very strong, large, and healthy individual – it would have been a tragedy no matter who suffers, but for such a remarkably successful individual to perish from something that violates the universal contract – the laws of natural selection, fitness, and adaptability – seems especially cruel – just as when a magnificently healthy songbird is brought to us with fatal injuries from a car or a cat. Fishing line, hooks, lures, nets, etc, are not agents of evolution, targeting the least fit among us – they are simply an injustice – a thoughtless or callous disregard.

After several days we took the rightfully indignant truly Great Blue Heron back to the Mad River, and wild freedom.

HWCC/bax Assistant Rehab Manager Lucinda Adamson and staff member Desiree Vang remove hook and line form Great Blue Heronwatch to see the Heron’s release!

Soon after releasing the heron, HWCC received an early morning message from Shelter Cove, nearly two hours south of our clinic by car. A gull was dangling by fishing line from a bluff above Black Sands beach. At first we tried to find someone closer to the scene who could help, but the current pandemic has reduced available resources… So we launched staff on resuce mission. When our staff reached the gull, the bird was dead, hanging from line.

Photograph texted to HWCC/bax in the early morning hours of a gull entangled in fishing line at Black Sands Beach in Shelter Cove.
ex-HWCC/bax intern and generally awesome climber and animal care giver Savannah Shore scrambles up the bluff to retrieve the bird.
The gull had been ensnared in this old gear.
take a moment

A few days before the gull died on that bluff, we admitted another hooked and entangled Western Gull, this bird found in Field’s Landing, right on Humboldt Bay. Unfortunately he had swallowed a hook. He was spitting up blood around a long piece of filament that reached further down his throat than we could see. This gull would need a wildlife surgeon.

We reached out to Bird Ally X co-founder and skilled wildlife veterinarian, Dr. Shannon Riggs, in Morro Bay where she is the Director of Animal Services for Pacific Wildlife Care. (listen to a conversation with Dr Riggs on our podcast) Shannon agreed to treat the bird and long relay (with awkward social distancing) was set up for transport. Jen Martin, an HWCC/bax intern who is not able to come to the clinic for shifts currently due to the pandemic, drove the gull down to Native Songbird Care and Conservation (NSCC) in Sebastopol, near Santa Rosa. BAX co-founder Marie Travers, volunteers at NSCC occasionally and was able to be there to receive the gull. Marie transported the gull to the Salinas area, where a Pacific Wildlife Care volunteer met her to take the bird on the last leg of the journey.

Radiographs of the gull with hook lodge in esophagus. Can you spot the offending piece of barbed metal?

The day after the gull arrived in Morro Bay (May 6, which as we all know is the anniversary of the day Henry Thoreau died of tuberculosis at the age of 44), Dr Riggs texted me the pictures of the radiographs she had made of the hook’s location. She added this comment to the images: “Well, it’s not in the worst place possible, but pretty damned close.  Will try to get it tomorrow, but not very optimistic.”

A good ‘doc’ doesn’t deliver false hope or promises and Shannon is a very good doctor. I’ve worked with her since 2007 and I trust her completely – I replied: Good Luck! – confident that the bird was in the best hands possible.

The hook that was caught in the gull’s esophagus
Our patient, post-op.

The next day we learned that the surgery was successful and that the gull was recovering well. Getting the above pictures, of the hook and the standing gull, post-op, were wonderful moments in a day of animal care, with losses, exhaustion, grief and joy. No animal still in captive care is out of the woods yet, so cautiously we celebrate his recovery. Soon we’ll be coordinating the trip back north so the gull can return to his home on Humboldt Bay, free and ready again for the wild challenges.

While at the release site for the Great Blue Heron above, this crap was picked up and brought back to the clinic by HCC/bax staff.

Everywhere that people go, fishing hooks and line are sure to follow. With our non-essential business on stand-still in many places, wouldn’t this be a good time to assign yourself some essential work? Namely, helping to clean this junk out of our local environs. It’s literally everywhere. If you go to beach, the river, a lake, a bay, a slough – carry a trash bag with you and pick up what others have left behind. You may never learn of the tragedy that you’ve averted, but every scrap removed from the environment is a scrap that won’t kill an innocent victim.

None of our work would happen as well as it does, with as many successes as we have, without your support. I say this all the time, because it true. Your generosity makes everything possible for wildlife care in our region, our state, and our world. Thank you.

DONATE TODAY TO HELP RESCUE ORPHANED AND INJURED WILD NEIGHBORS

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