A juvenile humpback whale is free thanks to the patience and diligence of a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-led rescue effort that tracked the whale every day for nearly a week, officials said.
On Friday, July 19, about three miles off the Dana Point Headlands, Justin Viezbicke, NOAA’s West Coast stranding coordinator, made the cut that finally got tightly wrapped fishing gear off the struggling marine mammal.
With his inflatable boat tucked in close to the skittish, approximately 30-foot-long whale, he used a 15-foot pole with a knife strapped to its end to saw through the line, he said.
“I was like, ‘Did I get it?’” Viezbicke said, recalling the moment he sliced the rope tightly wound around the whale’s tail. “We just decided to take a time-out and be patient. I was hoping he or she would get super active, and then within an hour, the whale threw its tail, and the gear came off. It was breaching and pec-slapping non-stop.”
“The whole team was elated,” he said, adding he got goosebumps and everyone was cheering and high-fiving. “It was a huge relief. It doesn’t happen all the time.”
For days, the team, including another vessel that operated a drone to provide footage to study the entanglement above and below the water’s surface and a third Newport Beach-based catamaran that carried supplies, had been trailing the whale after it was first spotted off Redondo Beach and again off Rancho Palos Verdes on July 13.
Charter boats spotted the whale along the Orange County coast over the following several days and Viezbicke made two attempts at slicing the fishing line on Thursday; one just missed the line, and the second time, the knife bounced over the line, he said.
Then on Friday, right around 2:30 p.m., three miles off Dana Point Headlands, Viezbicke struck gold. The whale reappeared, and after slowly following it Viezbicke made his final and successful cut when the animal rose high enough that its tail was out of the water.
“It was the first shot, and I got him,” he said.
Freeing a whale is difficult and dangerous and can only be done by teams trained and authorized by NOAA. Often, the boat attaches itself to the whale’s gear to try and slow it down and crews may attach buoys to further slow the animal so it can be approached to determine the amount of entanglement and course of action.
“It took a lot of patience until we got lucky, and the whale came up to the boat,” Viezbicke said, adding that the whale was entirely wrapped up on both sides of his fluke blade. “Typically, we like to attach ourselves and get towed by the whale. In this case, the boat was running and trying to time getting close to the whale. It was challenging to get the knife near the line when the whale was at the surface.”
He said the rescue teams, which included help from the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach and a new group called Entangled Whale Response of Orange County, were lucky because the whale continued to stay in a localized area between Newport Beach, Laguna Beach and Dana Point.
This was the fourth humpback whale confirmed entangled off the California coast this year. Two gray whales were also reported entangled in fishing gear.
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Viezbicke said the gear taken off the whale had two small buoys, but there are no markings to indicate which fishery it’s from.
He said he would speak with state Fish and Wildlife officials and fishermen to better understand where the gear could have come from. He’ll also contact whale experts to determine where the animal might have been swimming in the last six months.
“My guess is that (the gear) has been on there for three to six months and probably a lot more if it,” Viezbicke said. “Over time, it’s probably gotten pieces off. If we didn’t get it (all) off, it would have sliced its fluke off. There was about a foot cut into the leading edge of the right fluke.”
The whale’s injuries are still a concern, Viezbicke said on Monday, but he was optimistic it would continue to recover and added that he’d gotten reports from boat captains that the animal was still sticking around and seemed to be acting more normal.
Mark Girardeau, a nature photographer aboard Newport Coastal Adventure, photographed the whale off Newport Beach over the weekend.
Capt. Steve Burkhalter said the whale was back off the Dana Point Headlands when he saw it Monday, July 22, and it was swimming and feeding with a pod of long-beaked common dolphins. On Tuesday, the whale was still cruising south and was sighted about four miles off San Clemente.
“It looked comfortable and was taking normal breaths,” said Burkhalter, who has taken to calling the whale Freedom.
“This entanglement team worked so hard, it’s cool to see that the system worked,” he said. “Sometimes we don’t see that.”
In the end, Viezbicke threw back credit to Burkhalter and all the other whale-watching charter captains, who he said were instrumental to the happy ending.
“This was a cool one because we put so much effort into it,” Viezbicke said. “It reinforced what we’re doing and gives the community confidence that we’ll put in the needed time.”
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