Community Corner
Searchers Looking for Trapped Whale
Helicopters and boats are being used to find a whale that was trapped by a fishing line off of San Clemente yesterday. The whale could be heading north and is tagged with buoys.
Marine mammal experts used helicopters today to search for a roughly 40-foot gray whale with line caught on a fin and in its mouth, preventing the filter-feeder from diving for its food.
Yesterday, three members of the Pacific Marine Mammal Center were able to shadow the whale in an inflatable boat and cut away some of the line, but they lost track of the migrating whale at dusk.
"We're still in a holding pattern, waiting for the animal to be located,'' Melissa Sciacca of the nonprofit marine mammal center said about 10:15 a.m.
Find out what's happening in Hermosa Beachwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Three or four helicopter crews were looking for the whale, which apparently cannot dive because of the entanglement. Gray whales, unlike toothed whales, use sieve-like structures in their mouths called baleen to strain krill and other food from the water.
Before losing contact with the northbound whale Tuesday, the rescue crew
attached three floats to it whale to help spot it. Boaters in the area will be able to recognize it by the two small white buoys and one large orange buoy.
Find out what's happening in Hermosa Beachwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
"We've done this in the past and we've been able to locate the animals before," Sciacca said.
Some sort of GPS device would be the best way to track a whale, but those are expensive and the buoys are effective, Sciacca said.
The whale was found towing 50-100 feet of line, possibly from a lobster pot, on its left pectoral fin, and had another line stuck in its mouth.
The team "disentangled a good portion of the line that was on the animal" before suspending its work around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sciacca said.
The crew was being "extra cautious as the location of the entanglement poses the highest risk to the rescue team," Sciacca said.
The whale appeared to be a healthy adult, and the entanglement appeared to be fairly recent, Sciacca said. The whale was about 10 miles off San Onofre
at sundown Tuesday. It was last seen heading west, but it could also be heading north, since that is its normal migration pattern.
Boaters who see the whale with its buoys can call the Pacific Marine Mammal Center at (949) 494-3040.
