Frank was on the humpbacks blacklist – that was clear. Every time he went below, they appeared, broaching and spouting and slapping the water. Each time we would shout ‘Frank, they’re back!’ and his head would appear just as theirs disappeared below the waves. He had begun to accept that whale sightings were not to be a part of his Mexican cruising adventure.
Yet, here we were, the two of us, sitting in an inflatable on the backs of a mother humpback and her calf, as he hacked relentlessly at a nylon drift net that enveloped them both.
The morning began routinely enough…oatmeal, coffee, and anchors aweigh as we set a course for San Blas from Isla Isabel. We’d agreed the night before that we would try sailing – maybe set the asymmetrical – if we had any wind at all. Underway, we were relaxing in the cockpit talking about our respective searches for meaning and direction in our ‘jubilada’ years. Mark was interested in the concept of curiosity, and how the lives of ‘curious’ people differed from those of people who were less driven to ask why. Somewhere the conversation, Frank had shared the fact that he tended to become calmer under pressure, as do I.
Idly scanning the horizon, I noticed what looked like whale blow, but it looked a little odd – there was something yellow, something white, something that did not look quite right. Mark swung the helm over and we motored over to investigate. It took some time for all of us to register what we were seeing: a mother humpback with her calf right alongside, enveloped in a drift net of green nylon monofilament. A yellow polypropylene float line, strung with orange floats was woven through the net along their backs, knotted to a bright yellow jerry can. Enveloped in it all, the whales were still breathing, but neither could move.
Mark was on the radio, asking anyone monitoring 16 or 22 for advice. Did anyone copy? Was their anything we could do? Back comes The Rose with the instructions that we should send someone into the water, sending supportive thought messages to the whales, letting them know that we were there to help. Yeah, right. Attempting to convey support to the whales made sense to me, but I had seen those tails hit the water and the prospect of being alongside a trapped and frightened behemoth in a medium not my own was sobering. I was not sure I had enough anthropomorphism in me.
But I also knew that I had to help.
More advice on the radio…send a dinghy. This made sense, and somehow, without explicitly articulating the decision, it was made. Frank and I would take the dinghy to the whales and Mark would stay in the mother ship. Into the life vests….gathering knives, handheld VHF, the ditch bag…lowering the dinghy….we were ready. Mark, the responsible skipper, “Do you two both understand the risks you are taking?” We reassured him that we did, and that we would comply with any instructions he radioed about returning. Frank and I agreed that either of us could call it off at any time.
Ironically, in that moment I was more concerned about the outboard, since I had somehow ended up at the driving end of the boat – me, the person for whom outboards NEVER start. And yet, amazingly it did on the first pull. And we were off across the waves.
About 50 feet off the whales I cut off the outboard and we rowed the rest of the way in. We felt it best to approach the mother from the right side, since her calf was on her left. I was on the oars while Frank hung over the bow of the dinghy with his knife. On the scene, we could see how much trouble they were in – both whales had wads of netting caught in their mouths, and a veil of net effectively lashed them together.
Frank began working on the net about a foot ahead of her dorsal fin. I did my best to keep the dinghy off the back of either whale, yet with the bow pressed against the mother’s side. At times, I could tell that the dinghy was no longer supported solely by the water, and on more that one occasion, my heart leapt to my throat when an oar got caught in the net.
We kept working at it over the course of, I would guess, 90 minutes or so. Frank would pick the next area to work on and saw away for a while, while I tried to keep the dinghy in position. Eventually he was able to report that the mother’s head and mouth were free, and we began to believe that we might actually be able to accomplish something meaningful. From time to time we would back away and give the whales a chance to sink below the surface for a few moments and test their willingness to allow us to continue.
In addition, I maintained a near constant stream of verbal encouragement to the whales, thanking the mother for staying calm, and reiterating that we were there to help her and her baby. Although I have no idea if she could hear me, it seemed like a natural thing to do. Frank reported later that my stream of encouragement (some of which was directed at him) kept him from crying!
By our third or fourth approach, we began to believe that the mother was aware of what we were doing, and we decided to approach on the side that the baby was on, since by this time the baby was the most involved in the net. About this time, a panga with two fishermen arrived on the scene, and they pulled up to the whales with no hesitation and set to with their own knives. Watching them pull their panga right alongside gave me more confidence about the whales willingness to tolerate our proximity.
I also realized that bringing the dinghy was the smarter thing to do, for the net now seemed to pose more of a risk to us than the two whales. On several occasions, an oar got caught in the net and I had to stop rowing to release it, and once the towing ring of the dinghy became entangled.
And then there was their breathing – the constant reminder that we were dealing with two living creatures. The regular shower provided a point of levity – the first time it happened, Frank groaned with disgust, “Mary, I think they had the garlic shrimp last night!”
Frank tried to keep his own hands from getting ensnared, but managed to slice his finger pretty badly on the taut monofilament. As he dripped blood on Mark’s immaculate dinghy, I dug through the ditch bag for the first aid kit. Ironically, the kit had never been used and Mark had to use the knife to cut off the wire tie that kept the two zippers together. (NOTE to West Marine: put a warning tag on new kits telling buyers to immediately cut those wire ties.) Keeping the knife away from the dinghy was another concern.
One two or three occasions, we sensed the whales becoming restless, and we pulled away to see if they could work any of the net free themselves. They did appear to make a couple of serious attempts, perhaps sensing that they were less tightly bound. We gave them space to thrash a bit and allowed them to resurface before returning. On one occasion, we saw the mother try to sound, her tail coming to the surface, before they sank from sight and reappeared a few minutes later.
All the while that we were working away, Mark was hovering nearby in Wendaway, providing status reports to other concerned boats and checking in with us on the handheld VHF. He had reported the incident to the San Blas authorities and had requested help from the Mexican Navy. He reported to us later that we were actually being towed by the whales as they moved slowly through the water. Although I could see the mother’s head to one side of the dinghy, I could never see her tale, and so I presume that she was using her tail to stay on the surface, which would have provided some forward propulsion.
Frank continued to report success as he cut away more and more of the net – freeing the baby’s head, and working his way down the baby’s torso. At times, we realized that the mother was completely submerged, and was actually lifting the baby on her back. On another occasion, as we rowed back to the mother’s left side to work on the baby, she seemed to be turning away from us. But as we got closer, we saw that the baby was now on her right side, and she was actually moving to present the baby to us. This was heartening on two levels: the net had loosened enough to allow them to change their relative positions, and she clearly was trusting us to continue.
Meanwhile, Mark was becoming concerned about the rising wind, which was making it harder for us to stay in position, and he had given us 15 minutes to do whatever else we could. It seemed to me that more than 15 minutes had elapsed when Frank reported that he had cut away all of the net that he could reach. If there was any more, it was unreachable to him, and neither of us felt it would be safe to get into the water with the possibility of entangling ourselves. We pulled away and returned to Wendaway, hopeful that we had succeeded, but not entirely sure. As we pulled the dinghy back onto the davits, we kept an eye out for the whales, who disappeared from sight.
Mark set a course for San Blas as Frank and I kept lookout. There they were! We could clearly see the mother and baby, still swimming in tandem, and as the mother arched her back to dive we could see no shred of nets along the length of the body. They were free.
It wasn’t more than 15 minutes later that the Mexican Navy appeared, in a very fast boat with several men in camouflage on deck. As they pulled up along side, we reported that the whales had been freed, and indicated where we had last seen them. As their boat spun around (very impressive bow thrusters), we thanked them for coming out so quickly, and turned for San Blas.
Frank and I were both exhilarated and exhausted – him from sawing at the net, and me from non-stop rowing. We were thrilled that we had been able to help these clearly sentient beings, although the entire experience still seemed surreal. Mark had managed to shoot some video on his camera, so we could see that it was not a dream, and the three of us spent many hours verbally processing the incident.
In retrospect, we all felt that we had taken quite a risk, but we all felt quite confident in doing so. We had the right equipment – a solid RIB and motor, three knives (Frank did lose one), a handheld VHF, lifejackets in case we got thrown out, and a first aid kit. A good pair of scissors or pruning shears might have been useful.
We had excellent communication, and the three of us made a good team watching each other’s backs throughout the endeavor. Mark, for instance, reminded us by VHF to raise the outboard – getting the lower unit caught in the net would have been a huge problem. Facing backward as I was, I could see the whales below and to the side of us, but not the net, and Frank did a great job of directing me into position. We both agreed that it was serendipitous that we had had our earlier conversation about how we each reacted to pressure: we each knew that we had a partner who would not panic.
