Blue whale entangled in fishing line believed near Mexico

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. (AP) — A boat off the coast of Mexico apparently spotted the blue whale Monday that rescuers first saw several days ago entangled in hundreds of feet of fishing line near Los Angeles.

A blue whale trailing line and a red buoy was seen around 10:30 a.m. about 18 miles southwest of the Coronado Islands, according to Jim Milbury, a spokesman for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Those Islands are off Tijuana, Baja California, and more than 100 miles south of where the whale was last seen Friday.

U.S. rescuers cannot work those waters but have been in contact with their Mexican counterparts, Milbury said.

"There's not much we can do unless the whale turns north and comes back up," according to Milbury. He said his understanding was that Mexican rescuers from the group RABEN would need the whale to swim farther south to be able to help it. RABEN could not immediately be reached for comment Monday.

FULL story at link.


This Friday, Sept. 4, 2015, still image from video provided by KABC-TV, shows a blue whale that is tangled in fishing line, off the coast of Southern California near the Palos Verdes Peninsula. A disentanglement team from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration arrived at the scene before sunset and attached a larger buoy to keep track of the whale but decided to hold off on efforts to cut or detach the line until Saturday. (KABC-TV via AP)

Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/036e3ebb9d7a4d3fa7eda75c798a3586/blue-whale-entangled-los-angeles-coast-remains-elusive

[trillion]

1. The news says they couldn't do it before dark but will try it again tomorrow. They tried for 2 hour

today.

The people trying to save it speak:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/blue-whale-entangled-in-fishing-line-believed-near-mexico/

[Divernan]

2. "Driftnets are walls of death, and their use is flagrant piracy,"

I learned about the illegal use of driftnets by fishermen when I began blue water scuba diving. Their use is illegal, as spelled out in the article below. When patrol boats approach such fishing boats, the fishermen just cut the nets loose before they are boarded to destroy any evidence and the indestructible nets drift through the oceans killing every form of aquatic life in their paths, becoming literal Walls of Death. The article is from 2006 - obviously the problem still exists.

The article refers to a drift net which is 8 kilometres long - that is equal to a mind boggling, 4 MILES, 1708.9 yards in length.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/press/releases/greenpeace-rounds-up-wall-of/

Greenpeace rounds up 'wall of death' fishing nets in the Mediterranean sea
Press release - 23 June, 2006
Greenpeace activists aboard the Rainbow Warrior early this morning confronted Italian fishing pirates in the Mediterranean sea, some 65 kilometres south of the Italian island of Ponza, confiscating a section of the 8 kilometre long and 12 metre deep driftnet from the Italian vessel, which was being illegally used to catch a dwindling stock of swordfish. A sea turtle caught up in the nets was cut loose by the activists and released back into the sea.
zoom

The fishing pirates were using a fishing practice that has long been banned by the United Nations and the European Union because it also traps and kills thousands of whales, dolphins and turtles each year inthe Mediterranean. (1). Every night at this time of year these fishing pirates have cast enough driftnets to span the length of the Mediterranean and back again.

"Driftnets are walls of death, and their use is flagrant piracy," said Alessandro Gianni aboard the Rainbow Warrior. "Greenpeace continues to expose the offenders, but let's be clear - the responsibility to enforce the driftnets ban and punish these villains lies with the Italian government and the European Union. It is scandalous that for years Mediterranean governments have continued to condone piracy, when the law has given them a mandate to protect the Mediterranean Sea."

http://debatewise.org/debates/2943-driftnets/#yes3

The driftnets that the local poor might use are nothing compared to the massive commercial fleets, first employed in the 1980s by Japan, Korea and Taiwan. These use driftnets to basically “strip mine” the seas with nets sometimes up to 40 miles wide, draining them of all fish before even the local fishermen can get to it. Poor local fishermen also have an interest in banning driftnets: they would prefer a healthy fish stock to feed future generations, rather than exhausting and driving into extinction their livelihood within a few years. Besides, in Bangladesh, driftnets account for about 30% of all fish caught, meaning that there are enough alternatives.