Rescuers attempt to save entangled whale spotted near Camp Pendleton

Rescuers are on the lookout Tuesday trying to save a blue whale in a dire situation that was spotted off the coast of Camp Pendleton entangled in yards and yards of fishing gear.

Rescuers tried first tried to untangle the young mammal, believed to be 60 to 70-feet-long, on Monday after it was spotted around 9:30 a.m. by a skipper for Capt. Dave’s Dolphin and Whale Watching Safari. It appeared to be sleeping, according to The Orange County Register.

You can see on the video how still the whale is as the boat approaches it and then it appears to sink into the water where it stays just below the surface. "That is very unusual," one person is heard saying on the video.

Take a look.

But the captain of the boat then noticed that the whale had dozens of feet of line as well as two floats hanging from it. The orange striped buoys can be seen bobbing on top of the water.

Dave Anderson, who owns the whale watching company and also runs a NOAA-trained whale disentanglement group, estimated that the whale had some 200-feet of line often used with crab pots that had become wrapped around either its mouth or a flipper.

Repeated attempts to cut the line off were unsuccessful and crews lost sight of the whale as it got dark.

Officials are asking that boaters keep a lookout for the whale. It is trailing the blue lines, an orange buoy and two smaller floats. Anderson said he feared that if the mammal is not helped soon that it will die of exhaustion.