The hunt is on for the great blue whale in distress.
A plane,
helicopter and boat searched Saturday for a blue whale entangled in fishing
line off southern California after rescue efforts were suspended overnight, an
official said.
The blue whale
was tethered to a red-orange buoy Friday that should allow rescuers and the
seafaring public to more easily spot it, said Peter Wallerstein,president of Marine Animal Rescue, a nonprofit authorized to rescue marine
animals.
"It's
really big," Wallerstein said of the animal.
The entangled
whale is 80 feet long, he said. The longest blue whale ever measured was more
than 108 feet long, the Smithsonian Institute says.
As gargantuan as
it is, however, the leviathan proved elusive as of early Saturday afternoon,
and crews continued their search, Wallerstein said.
The blue whale,
an endangered species that's also Earth's largest animal, was last seen Friday
4 miles off the southern end of Catalina, an island 22 miles off mainland
California, Wallerstein said.
The effort marks
the first time that a blue whale would be rescued off California, the nonprofit
leader said. Federal and local teams are working together on the case.
"They can move pretty quick," Wallerstein said of the
blue whale's whereabouts. "They travel long distances in a short period of
time."
If anyone spots
the whale, he or she should call authorities. "One swish of the tail can
kill you or knock your boat out of commission," Wallerstein said.
Aerial photos
Friday showed the whale surfacing and then diving, pulling a long fishing line.
"It's in
pretty good condition," Wallerstein said Saturday. "It looks a little
thin. It's swimming really good. We put a buoy on it last night that should
slow it down, and we should be able to spot it."
The searchers'
mission is to free the blue whale from the fishing line. Whale watchers first
reported the whale trapped in the netting.
The National Marine Fisheries Service has made a national priority out of addressing the injury and
mortality of large whales entangled in fishing gear such as traps, pots and
netting.
An average of 11
large whales have become entangled annually in
such gear on the West Coast from 2000 to 2012, the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration says.
"However,
along the U.S. west coast, much is unknown about why, when, where, and how
whales are seriously injured or killed due to entanglement, how this threat may
be affecting their populations, and what can be done to minimize the
risk," said a 2013 report by
NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service.
There are 10,000
to 25,000 blue whales in the world, according to the World Wildlife Fund. They can be found off California,
Chile and the Coral Triangle near Indonesia.
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