A Whale Story While I was in the Galagapos Islands, we saved a sea lion. During a walk along a beach, my friends and I noticed an animal with a considerable length of fishing wire wrapped around cutting deeply into its neck. Several members of my group were marine biologists who work with sea lions, mannatees, and the like, and they decided to try to rid the animal of its man-made noose. Clapping their hands, they isolated it from a crowd of sea lions—they're friendly animals, unless they feel threatened, and this wasn't something one wanted to try amidst a crowd. One man was able to wrap a towel around the sea lion's head so that it couldn't use its strong jaws and sharp teeth. A second person threw a towel over the animal and held it down; a third swooped in with a knife. In seconds, it was all over: The wire was cut and the animal flopped away, barking, wearing on its face a look that truly seemed like recognition—and gratitude.

So I was delighted but not surprised to read the following article, sent to me by an eco-minded friend, about a whale similarly freed from crab trap lines by humans.

After a crab fisherman spotted a humpback whale entangled in nylon ropes near the Farallones, a group of islands about 20 miles off the coast of San Francisco, a group of divers from Marin County Marine Mammal Center got into the water to try to free it. No one had ever done that successfully before, and it's dangerous—humpback whales are not small. But this whale was in bad shape. About 20 of the crab-trap ropes, which are 240 feet long with weights every 60 feet, were wrapped around the animal's body. Some twelve crab traps, each weighing about 90 pounds, were also hanging from the whale, pulling it down. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, the whale was struggling to get to the surface to breathe.

The divers began to cut the ropes, and to their surprise, the whale simply let them, as if it knew what was happening. Then....

When the whale realized it was free, it began swimming around in circles,
according to the rescuers. [Diver James] Moskito said it swam to each diver, nuzzled him
and then swam to the next one.

"It felt to me like it was thanking us, knowing that it was free and that
we had helped it. It stopped about a foot away from me, pushed me around a little bit and
had some fun."

If you've ever seen a humpback whale, you can imagine what a remarkable moment this must have been. Especially because humpbacks generally shun human company.

Such human kindness is inspiring. Unfortunately, it seems to be the exception when it comes to whales. The media hasn't been covering this much, but the struggle to save the whales from hunting and extinction has taken a turn for the worse. Yesterday, as the Washington Post reports, a majority of countries on the International Whaling Commission voted to resume commercial whaling. "It's the first serious setback for those against whaling in years," said Glenn Inwood, a spokesman for the Japanese delegation. "It's only a matter of time before the commercial ban is overturned."

The way things are going, Inwood is right; there's just one more vote needed at the IWC, and then the ban—a historic conservation measure—will be history.

Meanwhile, the pro-whaling nations support their move with spurious arguments that they surely don't believe, like saying that killing whales will be good for fishing. (On the grounds that whales eat fish.) Of course, by that logic, killing humans would be the best possible thing one could do for fishing.

Whales are remarkable, majestic, beautiful animals, and there aren't a lot of them left. (The right whale, for example, is probably a goner.) If they vanish from the planet, what kind of world will we have left? Not one that I want to live on.  ¶ 6:39 AM