Another Gray Whale discovered entangled off Southern California

Mar 28, 2012

For the second time in five days off Southern California, a trained disentanglement crew is attempting to free a gray whale caught in commercial fishing gear.

The latest is a calf or small juvenile traveling with a larger whale, possibly its mother. They were spotted swimming slowly to the north Wednesday afternoon off Newport Beach, by a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter crew, which noted that a line attached to a buoy was wrapped around the smaller whale’s fluke.
 Part of the same disentanglement group that freed a juvenile gray whale from a gill-net Saturday off Dana Point arrived alongside both whales before dusk Wednesday, but conditions were too rough to attempt to cut what looked like several wraps of polypropalene line (perhaps from a lobster trap) around the whale’s tail section, or base of its fluke.

– Image showing larger gray whale alongside smaller entangled whale is courtesy of Dave Anderson

Instead, the group attached two large orange buoys and flashers to the line to make the whale easier to find on Thursday, when the rescue effort will resume. (If the the entangled whale is spotted by boaters, they’re asked to notify the Pacific Marine Mammal Center at 949-494 3050.)

“The good news is that because of the story, so many people now know that millions of dolphins and whales are killed by this type of fishing gear,” he said. “So the whale’s life will not have been for nothing.”

Anderson runs Capt. Dave’s Dolphin and Whale Safari and is hoping to return to whale watching, instead of whale rescuing, as soon as possible.

petethomasoutdoors.com

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UPDATED:

Rescuers free entangled gray whale off the Peninsula Calif.

Mar 29, 2012

By SUE MANNING
Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Rescuers in a small boat chased a migrating gray whale along the coast of Southern California for hours Thursday before they were able to cut off fishing traps, lines and debris wrapped around its tail.

The whale was spotted near Redondo Beach on Thursday morning, and rescue crews went out to meet it.

The disentanglement team would speed up, position its boat directly behind the whale, and then try to catch the tangle with a long rod with a blade on top. The first half dozen attempts failed, said Kelli Lewis, education director of the Pacific Marine Mammal Center, who watched the rescue from a trailing Los Angeles County Lifeguard boat.

“As soon as he got the blade in and cut through it, the net and the drag from the buoy, everything popped off and the whale dove. Everybody cheered,” Lewis said.

The team was able to recover the tangled mass and identified it as gear used in lobster or crab traps, with a long line attached and a flotation device at the top.

It was impossible to tell how long the whale had been tangled in the gear, Lewis said. The whale was a sub-adult, she said, somewhere between a first-year calf and a full-grown adult.

Grays are migrating north after …

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