Dead humpback whale found at empty fish farm in B.C.

Photos show the extent of damage done to a humpback whale that became entangled in debris including an anchor line at a fish farm off the Bella Bella coast. Sept. 12, 2016. (Photo courtesy Philip Charles)

A dead humpback whale was found entangled in an anchor support line at an empty fish farm in Sheep Passage, north of Bella Bella, on Tuesday.

Contractors and staff from the Campbell River based company, Marine Harvest Canada, discovered the whale as they were dismantling the site’s anchoring system from a previous whale entanglement, a release from the company said.

A humpback whale was found entangled at the same site in September.

“Prior to September’s incident, no such encounter had occurred in the company’s 30 years of operation,” the statement read.

As of Thursday employees had dismantled the entire site.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada was notified and cetacean experts will be investigating.

The fish farming company is analyzing all its sites with similar anchoring designs and engineers are making the necessary changes to ensure a similar incident doesn’t happen in the future, the release says.

Marine Harvest Canada produces one-fifth of the world’s farm-raised salmon in Canada, Scotland, Norway, Chile, Ireland and the Faroe Islands.

It operates salmon farms on the B.C. coast and Vancouver Island. Every year it produces 40,000 tonnes of sustainable farm-raised Atlantic salmon.