Community Corner
Gray Whale Still Unaccounted For, Say Rescuers
No sightings of the mammal reported since rescue workers backed off attempts to cut loose all of the debris Tuesday evening.
A 40-foot with a line caught on a fin and its mouth remained unaccounted for today, with no sightings of the mammal reported since rescue workers backed off attempts to cut loose all of the debris Tuesday evening.
The U.S. Coast Guard and other boaters in and around the water have been alerted to keep an eye out for the mammal, said Melissa Sciacca of the nonprofit . A few Coast Guard helicopter teams looked for the whale this morning, but had to be redirected to another assignment by the afternoon, she said.
The center has gotten a few leads on the whale's location, but all turned out to be false alarms, Sciacca said. from the center on Tuesday managed to cut loose a 120-foot rope from the mammal, but there is still some concern it has a line caught in its mouth, preventing the filter-feeder from diving for food.
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Before losing contact with the whale on Tuesday, the rescue crew attached three floats to help spot the animal, named "June" by the team. It's possible the whale has shaken the fishing line, Sciacca said. Dean Gomersall, the center's lead rescuer, said Tuesday that the "entanglement impeding June appeared to be a relatively new injury, and as far as we could tell, was not deeply imbedded.''
"This makes it possible for the debris and buoy attachments to have come off of the animal, attributing to a possible reason of why the whale has not yet been located,'' he said. "That is what we're hoping for. It's also possible that the whale has continued migrating west into deeper waters, or has turned north to finish its migration toward Alaska and is outside our search zone.''
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This is the third rescue the Pacific Marine Mammal Center has been involved in over the past month. In late March, a gray whale was found dead near Port J in Long Beach Harbor, according to the Orange County Register.
At the time, authorities were investigating whether the whale was the same one rescued from an entangled line off of Dana Point.
Patch will follow this story as it develops.