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TwitThisA Fantastic Moment
While Moskito and Young worked, the Marine Mammal Center's crew picked up Jason Russey and Ted Vivian, two more volunteer divers from the Superfish, and returned to the whale. They dropped into the water in snorkel gear and began the job of removing pieces of rope from the whale's mouth.Instead of teeth, humpbacks have thick, hair-like bristles called baleen that hang from the gum and serve as a food-filtration system. Ropes had gouged their way into the whale's mouth and were tangled in the baleen.
Floating just inches from her giant maw, Russey gripped the whale's lower lip and reached inside her mouth to tug out pieces that could keep her from feeding. The huge mammal opened and closed her mouth as he tugged, but remained motionless in the water.
It had been well over an hour since the rescuers arrived on the scene when Moskito got down to the last few ropes. They were deeply embedded in the blubber of the tail, and he couldn't pry them loose. Not knowing what the animal would do, he shoved his knife in and began to cut away. "I'm almost there," he mumbled through his breathing apparatus. "Just two more. I'll be done and you'll be free."
He made the last cut and watched a buoy dangling below spiral down into the darkness. Then he surfaced and shouted out a celebratory "Whoo-hoo. She's free!" The other three men joined in the hooting and hollering.
Finally liberated, the whale did a shallow dive. Moskito turned around: "Where'd it go? Where'd it go?" he called.
The next thing he knew, she was coming up from below and straight at him. Hey, I just saved you, he thought, relief turning to fear as she rushed him.
The humpback stopped a foot from his chest. She nudged him, then turned away and swam in a circle around the divers. One by one she grazed by each of the four men.
Trying to explain the whale's behavior scientifically, Frances Gulland, the vet at the Marine Mammal Center, thinks that she probably swam in circles because her body had been kinked for so long. The divers just happened to be there while she was exercising.
But the men disagree. She swam with them for a good ten minutes. They all say, as Moskito does, that it was one of the "most fantastic moments" of their lives.
And Tim Young, who's had more than his share of adrenaline adventures, says this: "I spent 26 years in the military doing high-risk rescues. Nothing's been more gratifying than this one. Nothing."
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