Video: Search, Rescue Efforts for Gray Whale Continue

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.

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Marine mammal experts used helicopters today to search for a roughly 40-foot gray whale with line caught on a fin and in its mouth, preventing the filter-feeder from diving for its food.

Yesterday, three members of the Pacific Marine Mammal Center were able to shadow the whale in an inflatable boat and cut away some of the line, but they lost track of the migrating whale at dusk.

"We're still in a holding pattern, waiting for the animal to be located,'' Melissa Sciacca of the nonprofit marine mammal center said about 10:15 a.m.

Three or four helicopter crews were looking for the whale, which apparently cannot dive because of the entanglement. Gray whales, unlike toothed whales, use sieve-like structures in their mouths called baleen to strain krill and other food from the water.

Before losing contact with the northbound whale Tuesday, the rescue crew attached three floats to it whale to help spot it.

"We've done this in the past and we've been able to locate the animals before,'' Sciacca said.

Some sort of GPS device would be the best way to track a whale, but those are expensive and the buoys are effective, Sciacca said.

The whale was found towing 50-100 feet of line, possibly from a lobster pot, on its left pectoral fin, and had another line stuck in its mouth.

The team "disentangled a good portion of the line that was on the animal'' before suspending its work around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sciacca said.

The crew was being ``extra cautious as the location of the entanglement poses the highest risk to the rescue team,'' Sciacca said.

The whale appeared to be a healthy adult, and the entanglement appeared to be fairly recent, Sciacca said. The whale was about 10 miles off San Onofre at sundown Tuesday.

Over the past month, members of the Pacific Marine Mammal Center have cut away entanglements on two other whales in similar situations.

This is the third rescue the center has been involved in over the past month, Sciacca said. Gray whales migrate between the waters off Baja California and Alaska, giving birth in warm Mexican water and spending summers up north.

See incredible video of yesterday's rescue efforts attached to this article.