‘Heartbreak' at sea; can this whale be saved?

A humpback whale breaching in the distance brought joy to a Friday morning charter off San Diego – until it became evident that the whale was severely entangled.

Domenic Biagini, who runs Gone Whale Watching San Diego, began a Friday night Facebook post under the title, “Heartbreak on Valentine’s Day,” and described what played out as “the most heart-wrenching day in our company’s short history.”

The distressed whale breached multiple times in an apparent effort to shake free of a gillnet that had become wrapped around much of its body and mouth area.

Commercial-fishing gillnets are sometimes referred to as “ghost nets” because they’re largely invisible and kill indiscriminately.

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Biagini’s encounter began late Friday morning. He notified SeaWorld and a disentanglement team arrived and spent several hours hoping for an opportunity to either cut the netting or attach a buoy so the whale would be easier to locate on Saturday.

The whale was too active to safely approach, however, and there was no fishing line trailing the mammal, so the team could not attach buoys.

The whale was re-sighted Saturday morning, however, by an unidentified party, about halfway between Newport Beach and Santa Catalina Island, according to Justin Greenman, NOAA’s Assistant California Stranding Network Coordinator.

It was with other whales and dolphins in a feeding group. The distressed whale was half-breaching and rolling at the surface, and seemed not to have lost any of the fishing gear.

“At this time we are not sending a response team, instead hoping for some re-sights as it continues to travel north and hopefully tires out or is able to shake some of the gear,” Greenman said.

(A disentanglement team cannot safely approach a 50-ton whale that is breaching or swimming erratically.)

Whale-watching crews throughout Southern California will be on the lookout throughout the busy Presidents Day weekend, and NOAA-trained disentanglement team is on standby in case the whale is spotted and can be safely approached.

Biagini, a renowned wildlife photographer whose charter business opened last September, told For The Win Outdoors that the SeaWorld effort ended late Friday afternoon “when the whale was still blasting north around Del Mar.”

It’s not clear where the whale became entangled, or if that occurred in U.S. waters. (Gillnets are allowed off California, but only away from the coast and under certain restrictions.)

But in an <a href=" “These lines are set up constantly around San Diego, oftentimes in some of the most critical areas for marine mammals. It’s maddening to see, and its effects on our local wildlife are severely underreported.” –Images are courtesy of Domenic Biagini