DANA POINT – A young blue whale estimated to be at 60 to 65 feet long became entangled in fishing gear and traps and was struggling off the coast Monday.
As of Tuesday evening, rescuers had lost track of the whale’s progress.
The whale was spotted around 9:30 a.m. Monday about four miles off the Dana Point Headlands by Capt. Tom Southern, a boat captain for Capt. Dave’s Dolphin & Whale Watching Safari. Southern saw the whale and thought it was sleeping. He noticed it was lifting its chin but couldn’t lift its tail. Then he noticed 200 feet of blue polypropylene line with two bullet floats used on Dungeness crab pots.
As of Monday night, the whale was off the north end of Camp Pendleton. Rescuers had made at least six attempts to cut the lines attached to the crab pot hanging below the whale and pulling down its tail. The team was able to get within 20 feet of the whale’s tail and at one point, a rescuer got the knife up against the line but couldn’t cut through it.
NOAA officials said efforts to free the whale will continue if it is spotted again. On Tuesday, boaters called NOAA to report possible sightings which turned out not to be the whale, said Michael Milstein, a spokesman for the agency. Officials have not given up hope on finding the whale, he said.
After spotting the whale on Monday, Southern, trained as part of NOAA’s Southern California whale disentanglement task force, notified officials at National Marine Fisheries Services, who oversee marine mammals for NOAA.
As part of the whale disentanglement protocol, boaters or agencies are asked to stand by the whale to help rescue teams find the creatures more quickly.
An Orange County sheriff’s Harbor Patrol boat was called in to keep watch while Dave Anderson, who operates Capt. Dave’s and is part of NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Southern California disentanglement response team, assembled his team and gear.
Sgt. John Hollenbeck, with the OCSD Harbor Patrol, said one of his deputies watched the whale until it dived out of sight.
The whale’s entanglement and attempted rescue is the first such effort on a blue whale in California by NOAA, said Milstein. Last November, an entangled blue whale was reported but never found.
NOAA reports 40 whale entanglements off California since January. That follows a record high year of entanglements in 2015, when more than 65 whales were spotted off the coast caught in crab and lobster fishing gear, according to data from the National Marine Fisheries Services.
From 2000 to 2012, an average of eight whales per year were found entangled off the California coast.
Proposed bill SB1287, which passed a vote in the state Assembly’s Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife on Monday, would change how lost crab traps are regulated and expand programs to recover them.
Representatives of the Center for Biodiversity said they hope the bill’s passage reduces California’s entanglement issues.
“Whale entanglements have been a growing problem in California over the last couple years,” said Kristen Monsell, attorney for the center and part of the Dungeness Crab Fishing Gear Working Group.
“Even though crab season ends this week, data from last year showed entanglements continuing all summer and peaking in September, so we’re concerned that lost gear is contributing to this problem,” she said. “Senate Bill 1287 would be a good start to collecting more lost gear, but we’d like to see even more done to reduce these heart-breaking entanglements.”
Rescues are coordinated by Justin Viezbicke, the federal agency’s marine mammal stranding coordinator. In accordance with the Marine Mammal Protection Act, Viezbicke and NOAA work with partners throughout the state to respond to whale entanglements. When a whale is sighted, boaters call a NOAA hotline to report the animal’s location, its appearance and a description of the distress.
Anderson, Southern and Viezbicke raced to the whale’s reported last location off the Dana Point Headlands by 12:30 p.m. Monday. They saw the whale by 1:30 p.m. swimming slowly north. It then turned and headed south.
“If we had been able to cut the line, most of the gear would have come off,” Southern said. “The whale also had line through its mouth. In my opinion, if this whale is not found very soon, his prognosis is poor. He was exhausted.”
A tracking buoy used on the whale during the rescue effort was removed Monday night. But a bright orange buoy and two smaller buoys remain attached to it, Anderson said.
“We’ll ask all boaters on the water to look for it,” Anderson said. “We don’t know where it will end up. It will not survive with all the gear on it. We have to get it off.”
Anderson said NOAA officials were able to determine the Dungeness crab traps and lines that entangled the whale came from a legal crab trap business and were picked up near Morro Bay. They were able to trackthe gear by identification numbers imprinted on it, Anderson said.
It appears the whale went through line and it could be wrapped around mouth or pectoral flippers. The line stretches to the back of its fluke, and then drops down, so the entanglement is weighing the whale down, he added.
Contact the writer: 714-796-2254 or eritchie@ocregister.com
