Young humpback whale saved
By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Science Writer
A team of scientists disentangled a young humpback whale off Lahaina yesterday from rope and netting that had left it with large area of raw flesh on one side.
"We're pretty confident that it's going to be OK," said Dave Matilla, science and rescue coordinator with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary.
The ropes were tangled in the whale's mouth and trailed back past its tail. Judging from the injuries, Matilla said, it seemed the tangles would sometimes snag the animal's tail, repeatedly reopening raw wounds. The whale may be the same one reported entangled off O'ahu during January, he said.
Pacific Whale Foundation Capt. Chris Nesbitt was running a whale watching tour with 37 people aboard the vessel Ocean Explorer at about 8:20 a.m. yesterday when he spotted the whale about two miles off Lahaina and called authorities.
"I could see that one side was raw and bloody. There were lines across its torso near the pectoral fins. There were light brown lines and a big green section of cargo netting," Nesbitt said.
He estimated the whale was 30 feet to 35 feet.
"It looked like it was pretty heavily stressed," he said.
Matilla said that the rescue effort involved his sanctuary team as well as the Coast Guard, and the help of Whaletrust, Center for Whale Studies and the Pacific Whale Foundation.
On close examination, when the sanctuary team arrived, it appeared a line was trailing back from one side of the whale's mouth, and a line with a lot of other entangled gear hung back on the other side. He said the animal was seen swimming backward and thrashing in apparent efforts to free itself, without success.
"It looked like there was enough stuff training behind it that it would occasionally entangle its tail stock," he said.
Whale researchers have developed specialized equipment for cutting entangled whales free, without risking getting into the water with the whales and the ropes. Matilla said his crew worked extensively at trying to get the lines cut, but were hampered by the whale's own actions.
"It was a harder one than we thought it was going to be. The whale never slowed down," he said.
The team was able to cut the rope at both sides of the animal's mouth shortly after 3 p.m., he said.
Entangling marine debris is reported several times each season on humpback whales, and is regarded as one of the issues that threatens the animals, which otherwise seem to be making a good recovery from the days of North Pacific whaling.
Two volunteer-driven humpback whale counts this weekend turned out more than 700 volunteers and spotted hundreds of the leviathans off the shores of five islands.
The whale counts did not result in any revision of estimates of humpback populations around the islands, and did not give any indication of notable problems with the populations of wintering whales.
On Maui, 110 volunteers participated in the Pacific Whale Foundation's Great Whale Count Saturday. They reported 649 whale sightings from 13 shoreline stations. The numbers might have been higher, but choppy sea conditions made thorough reporting difficult, said Greg Kaufman, foundation president.
"Because this is the time of the year when you tend to have mother and calf pods near shore, it's likely that we undercounted, especially when it came to the calves," he said.
NOAA's whale sanctuary had 628 volunteers watching the animals Saturday from 62 sites on O'ahu, Kaua'i, Kaho'olawe and Hawai'i Island. The sanctuary does not release the total count, but said that on average, viewers saw 3 whales every 15-minute viewing period. The sanctuary holds three counts each season, and compares its results with those of previous years to establish trends in whale behavior.
Reach Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 245-3074.
