Entangled blue whale spotted off San Pedro, officials say; rescuers en route

A blue whale entangled in a fishing line was spotted off the coast of southern California on Friday and rescue workers were determining how to free the massive mammal, officials said.

A blue whale is seen in waters off San Pedro’s Point Fermin on Friday, September 4, 2015. It was dragging a long trailing line with an attached buoy, possibly from a lobster or crab trap. The captain saw about 400 feet of line attached to the whale’s tail, and a buoy hanging off the end, Salas said.

“Nothing was unusual until the captain got close and he immediately noticed that the whale was in distress”, Salas told the newspaper.

A disentanglement team from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was dispatched to free the animal, Kneen said.

The blue whale is an endangered species and the largest animal, according to the Smithsonian National Zoological Park website, with the heaviest known weighing 190 tons and the longest measuring 108 feet.

The group, based out of NOAA’s Marine Animal Rescue Center at Fort MacArthur, was en route to a location in waters about 5 nautical miles south of Point Fermin, said A.J. Lester of the Los Angeles Count Fire Department’s Lifeguard Division.

Aerial footage from Sky9 showed a giant blue whale surfacing briefly and then diving below the surface, appearing to take a red buoy underwater, too.