Humpback Whale Entangled UPDATE [PHOTOS]

6 PM - Spinnaker is free and well and good! It's reported the whale had thirty wraps of line around its tail stock!!!

4 PM Update Saturday September 14th from the Bar Harbor Whale Watch Company

The rescue team is still working to remove and cut away fixed fishing gear that has the whale SPINNAKER tethered to the bottom. The ocean has picked up and there is a swell of 3-5 feet and wind and chop on top of that. Hats off to the the Maine Marine Patrol and Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies. The whale watch could see the Dirigo and two zodiacs battling the sea and cold in a dangerous situation to save this whale.

It turns out SPINNAKER Is a whale that we found entangled in 2006. Bob Bowman and the Maine Marine Patrol rescued the whale the next day and it had been anchored to the bottom over night.

On Friday, September 12^th a whale watching tour from Bar Harbor found a heavily entangled humpback whale 2 miles north of Mount Desert Rock at around 1pm. The vessel Atlanticat which is operated by Bar Harbor Whale Watch Company had about 270 passengers aboard and had left around noon.  The 40 foot humpback whale had line and net wrapped around its head, back, tail stock, through the mouth and around a pectoral flipper and was connected to four floating buoys and some bottom fishing gear that was anchoring it in place. The animal was breathing hard and obviously stressed and had a patch on its back where the line had rub the skin away and left a visible bleeding wound.

Captains Brian Silverman and Bryce Moody immediately followed their whale sense training protocol and called in the entanglement and position to Jamison Smith, project leader for the NOAA Atlantic large whale disentanglement network located in Gloucester, Massachusetts. The whale watch crew and passengers then stood by, collected pictures and tried to determine if the whale was tethered in place or slowly towing the fixed fishing gear. The gear initially looked like gill net gear with the possibility of lobster trap trawls in the mix as well. The NOAA team set out to coordinate a rescue plan and within two hours the Maine Department of Marine Resources vessel the Dirigo was on route from Southwest Harbor with a trained crew and lots of specialized equipment needed for whale disentanglement.

The whale watch left just before the Dirigo arrived at some time just after 4pm. Over the next few hours the marine patrol successfully removed and cut away all the gear around the head and mid-section of the whale. But with sun setting and the larger portion of line wrapped around the tail stock ten feet underwater they knew that they remainder of line would need to be addressed in the morning. Before leaving the whale they attached a number of floats to help take stress off the whale and kept the line up off the bottom. They also were able to attach a telemetry buoy to the fixed gear in case the whale was able to move over the night so they could find it at first light.

As of 10 AM  Saturday, September 13th, crews were at work attempting to disentangle the whale.

To see more great pictues from Walter Churchill, click HERE