For over 20 years, Mackie Greene has been pulling entangled whales back from the brink. As co-founder and director of whale rescue for the Canadian Whale Institute, he and his team cover nearly the entire east coast of Canada — one of just a handful of trained response teams in the country, alongside a longstanding team in Newfoundland and Labrador. It's a job that means racing to the water within the hour, tracking whales hundreds of miles offshore, and cutting rope by hand from animals that can weigh anywhere from 5 to 150 tons (roughly 4.5 to 136 metric tonnes).

In this episode, Mackie walks us through what a rescue actually looks like, how the work has evolved since he and co-founder Joe Howlett started with little more than knives taped to poles in 2002, and how a warming ocean is reshaping where — and how often — these rescues happen. It's a story about fishermen turned first responders, and what it takes to keep showing up for an animal that might fight you the whole way.

In this episode:

• What a whale disentanglement actually involves, start to finish
• How the Canadian Whale Institute's rescue team began — and how tragedy reshaped it
• Why right whales have shifted from the Bay of Fundy to the Gulf of St. Lawrence
• The shipping lane and fishing closure changes designed to protect them
• What keeps Mackie going back out, even after a rescue doesn't succeed

Guest: Mackie Greene Co-founder and Director of Whale Rescue, Canadian Whale Institute 📧 info@canadianwhaleinstitute.ca 📘 Facebook: /CanadianWhaleInstitute 📸 Instagram: @canadianwhaleinstitue 🐦 Twitter/X: @CanWhaleInst

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