Whale Story

This posting is another of those "check-out-the-cool-stuff-I-found-on-the-internet" entries. Just be glad I am not clogging your email accounts with the sap I am about to share with you. My coworker sent this note to me after I told her a story I recently read about biologists who observed a small school of dolphin swimming in a fashion that can only be described as a procession, surrounding a mother dolphin caring a deceased calf on her back. The biologists were so moved they stopped following the dolphins out of respect. In response, my coworker sent the following story (I didn't write it) and she definitely wins the "cool-animal-story-of-the-day" award. The link takes you to the original article which is a more detailed account of the story below and well worth reading.

"If you read the front page story of the SF Chronicle on Thursday, Dec 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-a very dangerous proposition. One slap of the tail could kill a rescuer.

They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her. When 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, and nudged them, pushed them gently around-she thanked them. Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives. 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."