[UPDATE 7 p.m.: The Whale Was Euthanized] Seeing Samoa’s Stranded Whale: A Photo Look at This Prehistoric Creature Who Came Ashore Tangled in Human Nets
Yesterday morning, a juvenile small adult humpback whale imprisoned in a tangle of fishing gear washed up on the Samoa Peninsula. In the midst of the jumble of modern life, a prehistoric creature in peril caught the heart of the community.
Below is the story of the whale’s plight and the efforts to help it.
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- Dr. Dawn Goley and Allison Lui from the HSU Marine Mammal Stranding Program work to disentangle the humpback whale on Samoa Beach. [Photo by Thomas Lal]
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- Members of the California Department of Fish and Game work with Dr. Dawn Goley from Humboldt State University to remove ropes from the entangled whale. [Photo by Thomas Lal]
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- Kat Meyer from the California Department of Fish and Game carries away the ropes after the whale was disentangled. [Photo by Thomas Lal]
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- Fish and Game Wardern Taylor Norris inspects the fishing gear that had been wrapped around the whale. [Photo by Thomas Lal]
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- Visible marks can be seen on the whale’s fins from being entangled in the fishing gear. [Photo by Thomas Lal]
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- Dr. Dawn Goley takes a moment to talk with a young child who came out to see the beached whale. [Photo by Thomas Lal]
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- Allison Lui from the HSU Marine Mammal Stranding Program tosses water on the whale as the sun beats down. [Photo by Thomas Lal]
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- Arcata resident and professional MMA fighter Cass Bell fills buckets of water to pour over the stranded whale. [Photo by Thomas Lal]
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- Sierra Zierler from the North Coast Marine Mammal Center plants a sign to warn people to keep back. [Photo by Thomas Lal]
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- Throughout the day, Allison Lui continues to throw sea water on the whale. [Photo by Mark McKenna]
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- The whale struggled in the surf but was unable to reach deeper water. [Photo by Mark McKenna]
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- Members of the community watched and yearned to help.[Photo by Mark McKenna]
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- But as the sun set, and humans did what little they could, the whale remained beached. [Photo by Mark McKenna]
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- Like worshipers praying, the watching community lifted their arms holding cameras high as if willing the massive creature up and into deeper water. [Photo by Mark McKenna]
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- As the last light slid from the sky, people recorded the whale’s plight…helpless to assist. [Photo by Mark McKenna]
![As the last light slid from the sky, people recorded the whale's plight...helpless to assist. [Photo by Mark McKenna]](https://kymkemp.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/BEACHED.WHALE_.HUMPBACK.SAMOA_.DSC_6134.jpg)
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![The darkness fell and the water rose but the whale was too weak to move...This morning, the whale is still alive and still stranded.[Photo by Mark McKenna]](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20800%20533'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
- The darkness fell and the water rose but the whale was too weak to move…This morning, the whale is still alive and still stranded. [Photo by Mark McKenna]
![The darkness fell and the water rose but the whale was too weak to move...This morning, the whale is still alive and still stranded.[Photo by Mark McKenna]](https://kymkemp.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/BEACHED.WHALE_.HUMPBACK.SAMOA_.DSC_6184.jpg)
UPDATE 9:43 a.m.: According to a tweet from Humboldt State University, “Prof. Dawn Goley, team lead, says they’re coordinating with NOAA, NMFS and the Marine Mammal Center on this incident. High tide at 10:15 a.m. today.”
We’ll be updating as information on any plans to help the whale are unveiled.
UPDATE 3 p.m.: Professor Dawn Goley, coordinator for the marine mammal stranding (NMFS)in Northern California, has been studying marine mammal biology at Humboldt State since 1996. For roughly 23 years she has worked to save stranded marine animals. Though she still is holding out hope, after the second high tide passed since the tangled humpback whale was tossed onto the Samoa Penninsula, she’s worried. “My full expectation is the animal won’t survive, but there is always hope. Even I, as a seasoned professional, have some hope but this is something I don’t think is feasible.”
Nonetheless, she’s in contact with professionals trying to figure out what can be done. “We have a vet team on their way,” she told us. “Honestly, we’re doing everything we can to have the most expertise and the most collaboration to create a successful stranding response.”
Humans even professionals tend to form attachments to those they struggle to save. “We care deeply about this animal,” she told us. “When you work with something, you have an emotional connection in response.”
The problem, she explained, is that the huge weight of a whale begins crushing it’s internal organs when it no longer has the buoyancy of the water to protect it. “Whales weigh multiple tons,” she said. “The organs aren’t able to deal with that kind of weight”—at least for as long as this one has been out of the water.
“It is heartbreaking and I want to do everything I can to ease its suffering,” Goley said. “[I want to] manage its stress level. It’s challenging when you are sick and injured in an unfamiliar environment.”
She says she understands the community is worried. “I feel everyone’s sadness and concern,” she told us. She says she has had multiple conversations with people who arrived to see the whale. “It is not an antagonistic place,” she said. “Everyone is just really concerned.” She says she explains to them what has and hasn’t worked in the past when moving stranded whales. She said talks about the process that the agencies there are going through. She feels people mostly understand why officials are making the choices they have to under the circumstances.
When asked if the crowd is forming a sort of Wake for a dying creature, she won’t go that far. “We’re in a wait and see place,” she said. “We’re taking it one step in a time.”
Are there plans to euthanize the whale? “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” she told us.
UPDATE 7 p.m.: The whale was euthanized around 5:45 p.m.
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Just tow it out…
I am sure that they could have towed it out if they wanted to. This article is so poorly written. The author of it just goes on and on about how people are standing there watching the poor thing die taking pictures. It’s kind of horrible that everyone just stood there with their cameras O I’m here with the whale. Those people should be ashamed of themselves. And a people wanted to possibly die or sacrifice themselves to save another being they should have been allowed to. And I’ve contacted that agency that comes out for The marine life. They are a bunch of crackpots. They don’t care about any of the wildlife. It’s absolutely crazy how hoity toity they are. All they do care about is collecting the paycheck. It’s quite sad that this little whale got mixed up in between someone’s paycheck and superiority complex. That’s pretty much all that this article reads. I think that they should totally choose a better author next time. This article it is shameful.
That’s not what I get out of it.
Striking out in every direction… You might have stayed up too late.
Why, you’re even mad at the article.
Call Justin Veizbicke 562-506-4315 if you want the story. He reportedly said he made the decision to euthanize the whale and he also reportedly said the whale seemed healthy, had the use of its tail to come ashore, and if you say yes to one volunteer, then you have to say yes to many. He apparently was convinced the tide would just wash it ashore again if they tried to get it into the water on Thursday. This man works in Southern California and was not at the site. The thinking evidently was that since the 2-year-old whale was 11 hours out of the water s/he would not survive. Not sure why a rescue mission wasn’t mounted on Wednesday when the HSU folks still appeared to have discretion.
Y HASN’T THE COAST GUARD TOWED IT OFF THE BEACH. A SEADOO COULD GET TOWE LINE TO SHORE. SLIP KNOT WITH QUICK RELEASE TOWE ROPE WILL KEEP FROM PUTTING PPL IN HARMS WAY
It’s organs were crushed. Attaching a strap and pulling would just have torn it to parts. They weigh tons…
Where are all our tree sitters during this? Those willing to be arrested for helping nature? This seems right up their alley
What a sad and disturbing comment.
Hi they’re saying they’ll arrest those who attempt to push the whale back in the water; folks who sit in trees locally are willing to be arrested to do what they think is right for nature how is this not a comparable situation?
Wow ignorance all around.
Ive been a treesitter and this is not the same at all.
A threatened forest can potentially saved by occupation until lawsuits/public pressure can halt it but an injured wild animal cannot.
What the hell would direct action do here????
Read some history. Should activists surround the whale and shove it? It can roll over and crush folks.
You cant just go move a multi ton creature and heavy equipment is too dangerous for the whale. There are hundreds of whales washing up like this all along the pac NW coast. This one happened to be found.
Direct action would be appropriate at the offices of those who make rules that allow all this gear to be drifting in the ocean without acciuntability. And who don’t help our local fisherfolks make a living while being careful to not lose gear. Subsidies like farming would be great. Maybe a protest at NOAA offices is due right now.
I worked with Dawn Goley on the oil spill in the bay in 97.
She is one of the most caring competant marine folks around. I completely trust her opinion. She doesn’t want to see it die either but knows its chances are bleak at this point. A bloody fin in sharky waters is no good either. You cant just go feed a whale or give it iv fluids to help it survive.
Its heartbreaking and human caused.
If you want to help take some responsibility in your own lives. Vote with your dollars, its the only vote you have that counts! Resesrch companies & only buy seafood from the few good companys left
This is the ocean dying folks. Get used to it, the point of no return has passed. The suffering of critters in the ocean is immense.
The krill eat the algae off the bottom of glaciers. No glaciers = no algae = no krill = ocean dying. Urchins are currently destroying our kelp forests. So its dying frim top down and bottom up.
Keeping as many trees standing right now to help mitigate carbon release and rising temps will help the ocean by potentially limiting ocean temp rises and keeping salmon going which are a building block if marine mammal survival.
This info has been around for 40 years now, the scientific models of climate change are pretty much right on the money, & its happening way faster than this govt admin will admit.
Educate yourselves. The earth is one giant ecosystem, every action ripples and affects the delicate balance.
Id luv to see if some native folks could come sing to this whale 💖
Well said, sadly I think most people at this point know what’s happening. Also sadly the vast majority of humans b on this planet cant do anything about it to stop it, and the ones that can, are too lazy, self centered, lack any empathy not social media based, and will just ride our distractions right into our species extinction.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10158329179512788&set=a.10150632438437788&type=3
Well said.. sadly too many cyber bullys who don’t actually know shit from shinola always have to run their mouths through their keyboards.. damn idiots..
My heart goes out to this and all the other whales that have been and are stranded..♡
If they are able to tow him/her out, wouldnt the whale be too weak to survive?
🕯🌳You got it,if it’s not done by what they considered specialist then it’s illegal,and the whale could die. 🚑
You are probably correct Michele, but anything they can try at this point would at least give it somewhat of a chance to live. I am not sure if they hooked a tow line to the tail, that it would withstand the pulling forces. I guess it could come off. I sure hope the whale makes a safe return to the ocean, but Inside I know that is not probably going to happen. Looks like a number of the line float that may lead them to the equipment owner. When heavy lines break with not much to float them they will sink, and there is no way for the fisherman to get it back onboard.
Clean up the damn oceans people!!!! Anyone caught throwing trash in the oceans or fishing boats caught leaving ropes and lines in the ocean should be fined tens of thousands of dollars and be put in jail. We have one earth people that is in a serious crisis situation. If you think we can ruin the earth completely, you are arrogant and foolish because the earth will take care of herself by removing all life to cleanse herself of us parasites. She has done it several times before and I do believe it is getting very close to this time again. How dare we go on this way. I am ashamed of all of us.
Old man, you yell at the west about trashing the ocean but ignore china, india, and africa out of fear of being called racist.
Wake up.
Nice whataboutism..
They took down a guy and arrested him yesterday when we first got there because he ran up and touched it.
Did he touch a no no spot on the whale? That thing looks a lot like my ex wife.
That would seem appropriate, Jumbo
I’m thinking pumps to liquefy the sand to place inflatable or water storage bladders under the whale, then that would give it more momentum or roll to push off during high tide. Rube Goldberg but heck, better than staring at it.
Super cool idea!
Dawn Goley should be fined/jailed if this whale does not survive because she did not do enough to save it! She is not allowing anyone else near the damn thing so she better hope the hung survives. We offered to help but we’re told we would be arrested. Do not molest ocean life Ms. Goley, you are not helping in any way. This animal is as good as dead! You are responsible
Youre so wrong.
Dawn Goley is an amazing person.
She is doing all she can do.
Why arent you calling for the arrests of those in power who allow things like this to happen???? There are stranded dying whales from the Canadian border down to baja.
People in power especially this administration are rolling back protections on all critters esoecially endangered species so go do some civil disobedience in DC if you wanna feel like youre doing something instead of calling for arrest of someone who is a champion of rights for marine critters.
Dont drive your car or use any petroleum product, which means no plastic. Dont support the navy and their horrible sonar testing in the ocean by not paying your taxes . Don’t eat any fish or anything grown over 50 miles from your home. No? Cant do that? Then youre the problem.
Its estimated only 9% of plastic in the world actually gets recycled. Are you going after those letting all this crap into the water???
Humpbacks have been listed as endangered since 1973. Thats why youll be arrested for just running up and touching them.
The stress of people clamoring around contributes to their death in these situations.
Dawn and all the other folks out there can only do so much.
Get off yer ass and do something.
Armchair whale protectors, have you all researched impacts on whales theyve tried those things on? Studied marine mammals for over 30 years? Read all the scientific lit on humpbacks???
If not then SHUT IT!!!
Everyone who knows what theyre doing arent commenting here because theyre out actually doing something.
At the least call your reps offices!
Everyone needs to read Gary Larsons book “There’s a Worm in my Dirt”. Rite now.
Oops typo book is called
“Theres a hair in my dirt”
What would you do, exactly. Push it back in the water?
You can lift it with a Chinook helicopter, you can put a rope around its tail and drag it, you can put a harness around it and gently tow it back into the ocean, you can fill it with dynamite and send it back to the ocean to re-assemble itself because “life finds a way”.
All options work but hippies refuse to let us help. Its like those idiots who say “dont mow the wild grass! Dont clear the brush! Let the deadfall lay!” and then bitched about the massive wildfires.
Fuck you PETA! Put the fucking whale back in the fucking ocean!
A large escavater at low tide could have dug a large deep channel, or even at high tide… I’ve seen fishing boats towed off the beach with this technique … if you get fish and game and the sheriffs out of the way, we could of saved this whale yesterday
Boats are not whales.
Every excavator ive seen get into the tide has sunk, &has leached oil and other engine liquids into the water.
Please let me know where youve seen one get out 50-100 feet or more into the water and not sink, id luv to see that.
You all have no idea what youre talking about.
This is nature. The chances of the whale surviving in the open ocean are very low.
The blame game is idiotic.
Hey nope, I’ve seen it first hand at the Mattole River mouth.. stranded boat, local rangers with heavy eguipment, dug trenches in the sand and got the boat pulled out to sea… it’s not rocket science … you no not if what you speak…oh by the way when have you ever seen an excavator on the beach ?
This is an ignorant statement, “ The krill eat the algae off the bottom of glaciers. No glaciers = no algae = no krill = ocean dying.“ the Krill off our coast have never been anywhere near a glacier. Glaciers are a land feature, Krill live in the ocean. I think it is safe to say no krill has ever eaten algae off the bottom of a glacier.
Title says nets, article says fishing gear. If you look at the ropes, it’s pretty evident they are from crab pots.
Whales migrate.
Yes its a general statement regarding krill&sea ice, but not untrue. We do have a non migratory pod off our coast but its a newer thing.
“The humpback whale is one of the largest marine mammals in existence. This large marine mammals is part of the baleen whale suborder and is known to consume a number of different small prey such as squid, krill, herring, pollock, haddock, mackerel, capelin, salmon and various other fish”.
Cool video. ..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1_BqC9IIuKU
“For their own meals, Antarctic krill eat small plants like phytoplankton, as well as algae under the surface of sea ice.”
“The whales that feed on krill eat a lot of it; most consume about 4 percent of their body weight daily in krill and plankton during a four to six month summer feeding frenzy before they travel and breed. “
Give the natives a permit to harvest! problem solved…
nonsense that ms goley and her crew can in any way be blamed for the whale’s death it might be possible to use heavy equipment to dig a deep hole just seawrrd of the critter, providing deeper water for an escape route i doubt this will be done dragging the whale off at high tidebut it would risk great trauma to the whale. there is ilttle chance that thiscritter will survive and that is very sad. a worldwide ban on drift nets would help.
Is there a reason they don’t/didn’t try to get the nets off the whale either? For a start?
The nets are all off the Whale.
there are several photos and captions depicting the removed ropes and perhaps crab pot floats.
removing entangling lines was the first step done expeditiously and efficciently right away.
I can’t help but feeling that if more resources were available, or if anyone had a plan, this would have been solved by now one way or another. If it needs to be kept wet, why are people using buckets, rather than dropping a pump down the beach a ways with a run of firehoses? Several people posting on this and other threads have had perfectly workable suggestions, such as using heavy equipment to dig a channel at low tide that the whale could flop into at high tide, or jetting the sand out from under the whale, or using heavy equipment to pile sand around the whale then filling it with water, to refloat the whale until the tide comes in, or just seeing how many people it takes to nudge a half-submerged juvenile/young/small humpback whale out to sea when the water is coming up. I know the harbor people have an excavator with a nice long boom and no one caring if it’s used in salt water, that they’ve been using on their DIY dredge. Or, if they’re talking about killing it anyway, why not give a sling and strong boat a try? Even if it kills it, it has a chance, while simply killing it does not. “[T]he process that the agencies there are going through” doesn’t seem to be resulting in any actions being taken, and it sounds like there isn’t enough time for processes like that.
Most of you didn’t read-when a whale gets beached like this, it’s immense weight crushes it’s own organs. Chances are it’s going to die. As such, I see a lot of potential food there.
And they went ahead and killed it.
Too bad our grandparents , and great grandparents, and their parents, or their’s couldn’t be bothered to care as much about each unique whale as it seems we (kind of ) do.
“….between 1900 and 1999, 2.9 million whales were killed by the whalingindustry: 276,442 in the North Atlantic, 563,696 in the North Pacific and 2,053,956 in the Southern Hemisphere. … As one whale species became depleted, whalers would switch to another (see ‘The largest hunt’).
The wider humpback whale , which was the species grounded on Samoa beach , was devastated by whaling between the late 1700s and the mid-1900s — with estimates that 300,000 of the animals were killed.Oct 17, 2019….”
I could educate you on the horrendous overfishing of the seas (and it’s not for human consumption , it’s for ANIMAL FEED/ANIMAL SUPPLEMENTS AND OILS.) Or on the billions upon billions of industrially raised animals that are needlessly slaughtered each yearfor a diet that is murdering us and which generates toxic run off +-+which further degrades the conditions in our once beautiful and sacred oceans+-+thru the creation of *dead zones.*
But I’m too tired, and frankly so annoyed at humanity right now.
. Look it up yourself .
Go vegan .
Or how about go half vegan?
Literally , no one fukn cares….. until there’s one whale , dead from a run in with a crab pot.. then everyone loves the whales!! And crab . And bacon .
I just want to cry so sad
Yep Goley and her gang of hypocrites let it suffer so long that it’s weight was crushing it’s organs and of course “it’s blood samples show toxicity”. There is alot they could’ve done; and yes – lots of empathetic and concerned people all around the world help large mammals every day. It’s not hard to lend a helping hand to another creature. She is a self proclaimed narcissist who’s inflated ego lied to the whale watchers and children that came to the beach tonight. Anybody can learn whatever out of a text book and pass a test, it’s a whole another concept to have logical common sense and a HEART. She’s a failure. But she score a free specimen for HSU. Should’ve seen how they hacked it up after the last shot! The whales tail raised in the air and it thrashed for a few moments – I only have to say it still could feel !!! Great job Goley. You are not a humanitarian or a friend to creatures. Where were the Native Americans?
🙁 Euthanizing a whale can’t be easy.
And What about the death flops of the…
…” estimated between 0.97 to 2.7 TRILLIONfish are caught from the wild and killed globally every year: ( This doesn’t include the billions of fish that are farmed….”)
And 10 million ton of that catch gets wasted annually, and a full 1/3 goes to feed pigs, chickens and ironically enough FARMED FISH
…”One-third of fish caught in the world’s oceans is ground up for animal feed, a potential problem for marine ecosystems and a waste of a resource that could directly nourish humans, scientists claim….”
Over-fishing, not climate change, is greatest danger to world’s oceans !!!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/3353985/One-third-of-fish-caught-worldwide-used-as-animal-feed.html
And it started with the whales…
“The earliest overfishing occurred in the early 1800s when humans, seeking blubber for lamp oil, decimated the whale population. Some fish that we eat, including Atlantic cod and herring and California’s sardines, were also harvested to the brink of extinction by the mid-1900s….”
But one whale flipped its flipper!
…Maybe it was raising a red flag .
“Overfishing, not climate change, is greatest danger to world’s oceans !!!” There are species of fish that are close to extinction. Overharvesting select species of fish for human consumption has reduced numbers of fish like salmon and blue fin tuna and several bottomfish. Like the beautiful Redwood trees that one hundred years ago lumber mills were saying we will never run out of trees didn’t factor in improved technology to fall more trees, haul more trees to mills and process more trees into building materials to the point of clear cutting Redwoods( especially around the Bald Hills area) for the Gov’t having to turn the remaining Redwoods into parks. And even though there are still people in the lumber industry who claimed trees are a renewal resource never refer to Redwood trees being renewable. Yet claim they replant trees, but never replant Redwoods because it takes four hundred years to grow a mature Redwood tree. Same can be said for whales. In the late 1800’s it was said we will never kill all the whales and then came very fast large ships with large harpoons that could chase down whales and kill them than 100 times faster than whale sail boats. Likewise Salmon fishing. In Alaska commercial fisherman claimed the salmon fish were so numerous that it wouldn’t be possible to over harvest. And today quotas and time frames are being placed to counter large fishing boats from Seattle and all the way down to San Diego who travel to Alaska with long gill nets that can take a hundred times as many fish as a single Alaskan native commercial fisherman can harvest. The lesson here is the spider web analogy. You tug on one side of the web and all sides of the web feel the effect. Ecology is a large web.
Letting people help is better than nothing. I do not go for let nature take it’s course. Sorry I have a right to my opinion and I’m sticking to it. This was so sad! If I see a baby bird injured am I going to ignore it and walk away? No I won’t .Every living creature has a right to life; know matter how small! My adult daughter found 2 injured baby birds in my yard; She brought them in to me. We checked for injuries; let them rest; grow and eat. You knew when it was time to release them.One and than the other was let go. It is a wonderful thing to see them fly away. I also believe every baby should have a chance at life. Every life matters. We as humans are the care takers of this earth. Most have failed. It’s our responsibility.
Well said.
Nature takes it’s course anyway. It does not require or ask your permission. Our “nature” is apparently to shit in our own nest until it is unliveable😁
it is as if DFW wanted it to die and were guarding their evidence for determination and collection of a hefty fine. if so it seems like a conflict of interest for DFW to handle a situation like this. its not like this doesn’t happen elsewhere around the globe with successful outcomes. the buoy has the fishermen’s info on it. someone could have easily dug a trench at low tide with an excavator, which has had a huge success rate in normal places of the globe (like everywhere else). if I were the attorney for the fisherman, I would push for endangerment, DFW choose to kill the mammal.
what are the odds that this gear was a test pot for testing crab for domoic acid and under full authorization of the DFW. its not old abandon gear and there is no other active gear out there. the only other scenario is Canadian gear the whale pickup on its way.
This whale suffered and died, as have astronomical numbers of other animals, because people insist on eating animals. It’s so hypocritical to express concern for one victim of fishing gear while supporting the demand that causes such misery.
All of the nutrients we need in order to thrive can be obtained from plant sources, and more healthfully, humanely, and environmentally responsibly. There are marvelous vegan versions of virtually every type of food imaginable, including vegan seafood: http://www.FishFeel.org/seafood Needlessly harming animals for food or anything else is animal abuse.
If you genuinely care, opt for a vegan diet, and urge others to do the same. Otherwise, spare us the crocodile tears.