Saving Whales | California Academy of Sciences

(Kathi) We got a call on April 27th

that there was an entangled humpback whale

in Monterey Bay in the sanctuary.

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

A NOAA regulated group of volunteers

trained to respond to whales in distress.

(Kathi) 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.

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

(Kathi) 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 in 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 cetacean.

It's 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 embedded line

so they wouldn't further hurt the animal.

(Kathi) We decided to try
an unwrap technique.

We saw it was wrapped
three times around the fluke.

"Can we unwrapped this
without having to cut it?"

So we had two boats that
were working together to unwrap.

(Narrator) After carefully
unwrapping the first line,

the team made one small cut,
unwrapped a bit more,

and freed the whale.

We're helping save one animal's life,

but this isn't the solution
to the problem.

So we share all of our information
with the NOAA Fisheries office.

For every one whale that we see entangled,

there are roughly ten whales
that aren't being reported.

This is happening because we have
a growing population of whales

as well as we're taking more
and more out of the sea.

Out here on the West Coast,

the crab pot is the most common
entanglement that we see.

There are going to be issues
where we have lots of whales

and fishing happening at the same time.

So how can we minimize that?

These are all human interaction cases.

It's something that we as a species
have done to this animal.

So I want to be a part of the team
that help bring some solutions

and mitigations to the problem.