June 9, 2014 — A humpback whale was saved from a life-threatening rope tangle after a seven-hour rescue near the north shore of Santa Cruz Island on June 6. Captain Dave Beezer and his crew aboard the Condor Express saw a plethora of blue and humpback whales on a whale-watching tour last Thursday evening, but as they concluded the trip, Beezer noticed something unusual about one particular creature. With a boatful of worried passengers, they followed the massive mammal and found it was tangled in fishing rope, circling it a couple of times around its middle and hog-tying its tail flukes. “All it could do was slowly swim in small circles,” explained Beezer.
“Every entanglement is completely different,” Beezer said. “It’s rare that you see two that are similar.” This whale was fairly stationary because it was anchored to the ocean floor, 700 feet down. But it was almost entirely trapped and had just enough mobility to raise its head enough to expose its blowholes to breathe. (A few weeks ago, a rescue crew tracked a similarly entangled whale for nearly 700 miles and two-and-a-half weeks.)
Knowing the animal would likely die without assistance, Beezer contacted the right people — Channel Islands Marine & Wildlife Institute (CIMWI), which operates under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — and a whale entanglement team (WET) of six took off with a small rescue boat, the right equipment, and necessary permits at 7 a.m. the next morning.
Read the full story at the Santa Barbara Independent