OCEANSIDE, Calif. — Rescue crews worked for hours to try and save a humpback whale entangled with a piece of rope around its body near Oceanside in San Diego County.
From Oceanside, the whale traveled down south. As the sun was going down Sunday evening, rescue teams had to abandon its efforts for safety purposes and its close proximity to Baja California.
“One thing about this situation is it can continue to pick up things as it dives,” SeaWorld Rescue Program Supervisor, Jenny Smith said.
SeaWorld Rescue got a call of an entangled whale at around noon Sunday, about 10 miles off shore.
“This has been a hundred mile pursuit just in southern California,” SeaWorld Rescue Zoological Care Supervisor Mike Hopkins said.
Hopkins was part of the rescue, he tells CBS 8 that the whale is about 30 feet long and looks skinny. He said it's probably from traveling with gear and not eating as much.
“I wouldn't say it's in dire straits, right now so we have a little bit of time before our full rescue so we are not too worried about that right now,” Hopkins said.
Several other agencies worked together in this rescue operation. Once the whale was located by SeaWorld Rescue, they began documenting what they were seeing and its behavior. It's a step that's crucial when working with other rescue teams.
At the moment, crews don't know how the whale became entangled in the first place.
“I have no idea where this gear came from, we were unable to identify any tags or anything, it's possible it could've been far north of us,” Hopkins said.
Given the pace the whale was traveling, SeaWorld Rescue believe its traveled to Baja waters by now.
“Unfortunately, we were close enough to the border that we were worried about if we put a buoys or a satellite tag or anything else we would travel into Mexican waters and were not allowed to retrieve anything or do anything in those waters,” Hopkins said.
A rescue team in Baja is now taking over this effort to save the whale.
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