SHANGRALA'S

WHALE RESCUE!

A TRUE Whale Of A Tale!

If you read the front page story of the San Francisco Chronicle on December 14, 2005, you would have read about a female humpback whale who had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines.       She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her body, her tail, her torso, a line tugging in her mouth.       A fisherman spotted her just east of the Farralone Islands (outside the Golden Gate) and radioed an environmental group for help. Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so bad off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her...       "I was the first diver in the water, and my heart sank when I saw all the lines wrapped around her," said Moskito. "I really didn't think we were going to be able to save her." Moskito said about 20 crab-pot ropes, which are 240 feet long with weights every 60 feet, were wrapped around the animal. Rope was wrapped at least four times around the tail, the back and the left front flipper, and there was a line in the whale's mouth.       The crab pot lines were cinched so tight, James Moskito said, that the rope was digging into the animal's blubber and leaving visible cuts. At least 12 crab traps, weighing 90 pounds each, hung off the whale. The combined weight was pulling the whale downward, forcing her to struggle just to keep her blow-hole out of the water.       Four divers spent about an hour cutting the nylon ropes with a special curved knife, a risky undertaking since a single flip of the gargantuan mammal's tail could easily have killed any of them. Eventually they freed the humpback, a feat that a rep of the Marine Mammal Center (MMC) described as the first successful attempt on the West Coast to free an entangled humpback.       The divers told a San Francisco Chronicle reporter that the whale seemingly thanked them for its deliverance once the rescue operation was complete:       When the whale knew she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time.       Moskito said she swam to each diver, nuzzled him and then swam to the next one. "It felt to me like she was thanking us, knowing that she was free and that we had helped her. She stopped about a foot away from me, pushed me around a little bit and had some fun. She seemed kind of affectionate, like a dog that's happy to see you," Moskito said. "I never felt threatened. It was an amazing, unbelievable experience."       The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth says her eye was following him the whole time, and he will never be the same.

May you, and all those you love,
be so blessed and fortunate
to be surrounded by people
who will help you get untangled
from the things that are binding you.
And, may you always know the joy
of giving and receiving gratitude.

I pass this on to you in the same spirit.

        

SEE ALSO: Whale Rescue 2!






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-To SHANGRALA-

SPECIAL THANKS To STEVE GRANT For Sharing This Story.

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