Minutes after he heard that yet another whale was entangled in fishing gear a few miles off Newport Beach, Dave Anderson began assembling the tools and people he’d need to help the creature survive.
In less than an hour, Anderson, who runs a whale-watching company in Dana Point, was sharing a tiny boat with three other men to take equipment (mostly knives and poles) on a bumpy ride to where the animal was stuck.
That was Oct. 30, and the humpback was the third entangled whale seen off Southern California in as many days. A day earlier a humpback got ensnared near Long Beach. The day before that, it was a fin whale off San Diego.
So far this year, a record 63 whales have been spotted off the California coast entangled in crab and lobster fishing gear, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service. From 2000 to 2012, an average of eight whales per year were found entangled off the California coast.
Most of the struggling whales have been sighted off Orange County and Monterey – two areas that federal officials say are bustling with boaters, fishing and whales.
For the small world of people expert in saving the creatures, the season has been like an endless – sometimes exhilarating, sometimes tragic – emergency.
“It’s elating when you achieve your goal and help the animal out,” said longtime whale rescuer Keith Yip.
“We all know what’s involved, and we know the danger zones.”
Warm water, say scientists and local watermen, seems to be driving the problem.
The unusually warm ocean that’s brought everything from red crabs to the rarely seen oarfish to local beaches also has brought huge numbers of sporting fish (and some tropical species) to the ocean off California. That, in turn, has brought together big numbers of fish-eating whales and fishermen, a combination that has resulted in the spike in ensnared whales.
Another factor is greater awareness. As more fishermen and boaters learn that whale entanglement is a problem, they’re more likely to report affected animals when they see them.
Whatever the reason, the problem has reached a point where some animals seem to be repeat offenders when it comes to getting caught up in the lines.
Late last month, a humpback familiar to local disentanglement teams was sighted twice, once off Dana Point and then a day later off Point Loma. The whale had a green buoy attached to its head.
RESPONDING TO A CALL
Justin Viezbicke, marine mammal stranding coordinator at NOAA, is one of only three level-four entanglement responders in California.
And this year, he’s a busy man.
As part of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, Viezbicke and NOAA work with a network of partners throughout the state to respond to whale entanglements, helping to rescue the animals whenever possible. Level-four responders must be present during any attempts to free a whale.
Anderson, who operates Capt. Dave’s Dolphin & Whale Watching Safari in Dana Point Harbor, is in the network. So is Keith Matassa, director of the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach.
Besides Viezbicke, two other level-four responders are Yip, curator of mammals at SeaWorld San Diego; and Pieter Folkens, who oversees whale disentanglements in central and Northern California.
When a whale is sighted – such as the recent humpback off Newport Beach – boaters call a NOAA hotline to report the creature’s exact location, its appearance and a description of the distress.
The callers often are asked to stay with the whale until one of the disentanglement teams can arrive. In the case of the humpback, several whale-watching boats in Newport and the Orange County Sheriff’s Harbor Patrol boat initially stayed on the scene.
Deputies reported the whale was coming up for air every 10 minutes, but by the time Anderson arrived the whale hadn’t been sighted for 20 minutes. Viezbicke, who would oversee the disentanglement, was on the harbor patrol boat. He transferred over to Anderson’s Zodiac-style inflatable boat.
Once the team members found the whale again, they stayed nearby. It was surfacing to breathe every five to nine minutes, and the rescuers watched this for a few cycles.
Viezbicke said this initial stage of rescue – assessing the whale’s condition and determining if the entanglement is life-threatening – can be more important than getting the whale out of whatever it’s entangled in.
“We know the entanglement program is a Band-Aid,” Viezbicke said. “We want to find out what kind of gear it is, where it was set, and figure out where and when whales are getting caught.”
After the whale dived and surfaced a few times, Anderson powered his boat over and stayed parallel to the whale, which had stopped suddenly at the surface. Viezbicke was on the bow and clipped a 22-inch orange poly ball to the end of a trailing line to make it easier to track the whale.
“We pulled alongside the whale and put a pole in the water with a GoPro camera to see where the ropes were attached,” Anderson said.
The rescuers also knew some key points about the problem at hand thanks to drone video images they had seen of the whale.
The netting, Anderson said, most likely was Dungeness crab trap gear from Oregon. They could see that the entrapment started at the whale’s front end, probably through its mouth or a pectoral flipper, and ran down either side before connecting behind its flukes. They knew about 250 feet of rope trailed behind the creature.
And, Anderson added, they knew the situation was potentially dire.
“Leaving gear in the whale’s mouth could be life-threatening, so we wanted to make a thorough assessment before cutting any line off.”
The whale’s behavior was erratic. It breached and dived multiple times, moves that Anderson said were signals of the animal’s irritation. And, briefly, the entanglement team was towed by the whale.
“With dark closing in, we decided to leave (the) buoy on the whale and hope for another opportunity the next day.”
That night, Viezbicke texted Yip, telling him the whale might be in San Diego waters in the next eight hours.
By 9 a.m., scientists at the Southwest Fisheries office near the Scripps Research Institute spotted the orange buoy from their windows. The whale was half a mile from the coast.
La Jolla lifeguards took a boat out to stay near the whale until Yip’s team arrived.
ANOTHER ATTEMPT
Once at sea, Yip contacted NOAA for assessment.
Again, the whale was being evasive. Yip used stealth to catch a clear image of the whale, shutting off his boat’s engines and waiting while dipping cameras under the water’s surface near the whale.
They got within about 15 feet of the creature, but the water was too murky to be certain about where best to cut the ropes from the whale.
Yip and his team reconvened at the support boat. Their plan: remove the snarl of line the whale was dragging.
After the whale surfaced again, they moved their inflatable craft into position.
Eric Otjen, leaning from the front, was responsible for grabbing the line and holding onto the whale so the boat could be pulled up along its side. Yip sat in the center, giving instructions on when to pull the rope and when to give slack. At the back of the boat, Mike Hopkins served as pilot, keeping the craft within reach of the whale’s line.
They got up under the line and grabbed it. The whale felt a tug and immediately dove. The line went from horizontal to a 90-degree angle. The front end of the boat went down into the water.
“Our job was to hold on if we could without jeopardizing the safety of the animal or the people on the boat,” Yip said.
“It’s hard to hold on. The pressure of the rope indents the front of the boat. My job is to say when do we let go of the rope. I’m watching to make sure it doesn’t go slack.
“Those whales breach,” Yip added. “The last thing I want is to get my team under a breach.”
After multiple dives and readjustments of the line, the team got close enough to set a knife. That’s when the whale dived again. They took out a second knife. The whale continued to dive, taking only a couple of breaths before going back underwater.
“It’s so intense; the breaths are really loud,” Yip said. “It’s a surreal sound, but an experienced (rescuer) can tell if the whale is at death’s doorstep, labored or tired.”
This whale was tired; the team was diligent. And, once more, the tired, sunburned and thirsty rescuers tried to grab the lines and hold on.
By this point the whale had traveled about 8 miles from La Jolla and was closer to Pacific Beach. The rescuers were within 10 feet of the whale when, suddenly, it stopped, just as it had the day before off Newport.
“We rear-ended him,” Yip said. “I was worried we’d drift over the fluke. That thing could have launched us easily.
“Then we got up to the side,“ Yip added. “I grabbed my knife and made a hand cut behind the fluke. … We achieved our goal.”
Yip has worked in mammal rescue for 30 years. Though his team couldn’t get the line out of the whale’s mouth, he described this particular rescue as “once in a lifetime.”
For Viezbicke, who oversees the disentanglement network for NOAA, the scene was bittersweet.
Whether the whale will eventually shake the remaining rope through its mouth is questionable. If the animal can’t forage, it will cause future problems.
“Our hope is we’ll see the whale in the future and the gear will be gone,” Viezbicke said.
“But our concern is that it’s in its mouth. This is one of those examples where the network was excited to free it of as much as we could, but at the same time you’re left with a bad feeling in the pit of your stomach, thinking we would have liked to do more. It’s tough.
“There’s an effect to the things we do in the ocean,” he added. “We need to be aware of that.”
Contact the writer: 714-796-2254 or eritchie@ocregister.com
