A pretty cool story about a great day for marine biologists and a 35 year old whale. What's also nice to see are the photos of the crowd who come around to watch this success story. Not so nice is the photo of the tangled mess of fishing nets that trapped the old whale. Click through all of the photos here.
It took about four hours for a team of marine animal rescue workers to remove the mesh rope knotted around the whale's head and tail, said Tim Sullivan of the Ocean Institute in Dana Point.
Rescue workers freed the whale from a snarl of fishing nets, and it swam back into the Pacific. The whale was docile and calm throughout the rescue operation, rescuers said.
It was a happy ending to a tense, two-day episode that involved some of the nation's top marine biologists and drew hundreds of spectators to the shore. And it was first time in more than a decade that a whale has been successfully freed from nets in Southern California.
