Four members of the Whale Entanglement Team approach a whale to cut blue steel lines that have prevented the animal from eating and thereby losing weight.
When a whale in distress meets a team of volunteers, magical things can happen on Monterey Bay.
Four members of the Whale Entanglement Team approach a whale to cut blue steel lines that have prevented the animal from eating and thereby losing weight.
At about noon on Sept. 13, the crew and passengers of the Blue Ocean Whale Watch boat, which operates out of Moss Landing Harbor, spotted bunches of humpbacks a few miles off the shore of Moss Landing. Kate Cummings, one of the boat???s owners and a naturalist, was narrating through a PA system what animals the passengers were seeing.
Then she saw one whale acting oddly.
???Humpbacks do chin-slaps, when they come halfway out of water and crash down on their chin,??? she says. ???This one was doing it in weird angles. First it wasn???t clear what was happening, so we got closer. That???s when we saw line wrapped around its head and through its mouth.???
The whale was tangled up in spotted-prawn lines ??? lines that were attached to 25 spot prawn traps anchored to the bottom of ocean. It was struggling to keep its head above water by ???skulling??? with its pectoral fins, a sort of desperate motion akin to a tired person treading water.