Saving Whales | California Academy of Sciences

We got a call on April 27th

that there was an entangled humpback whale

in Monterey Bay in the sactuary.

(Narrator) Kathi is part of the whale
entanglement team.

*A [inaudible] regulated
group of volunteers

trained to respond to whales in distress.

Usually in California
here along the west coast,

we get eight calls per year.

Finding the whale is the hardest
part of disentanglement.

It's a big ocean and a small whale

compared to the ocean.

This time they were able to find
the whale and respond.

We went out the next day
and we found the whale

and we were able to cut off a crab pot
and 250 feet of line

to remove the most life-threatening
part of the entanglement

but there was still a tight wrap
on the peduncle,

the tail stock where it meets the fluke.

There are three tight wraps
deeply embedded

and with some skin grown over.

We knew we needed to get the wrap
off this whale.

It was a sub adult whale,

25 feet long approximately,

which means that they're
going to grow to 40 - 50 feet.

So as the whale grows,
the entanglement doesn't grow

and we knew that would potentially be
the life-threatening thing.

Unfortunately, conditions deteriorated
where it was unsafe to be out there,

so we headed back to shore,

knowing we had the
telemetry device on it.

(Narrator) The telemetry device
allows the team

to track the whale's movements.

We had to wait until the whale
got into a good position

and the weather would be safe
for us to go out and respond.

(Narrator) In this case, the team
had to wait for two weeks

finally tracking down the whale
off the cost of Santa Barbara.

They set out early in the morning,
carefully approaching the Cetacea.

Kind of like Jaws.
You put barrels.

In our case, we put buoys on the whale

to slow it down and
bring it to the surface.

(Narrator) The team needed
a different approach

to remove the deeply