— A young humpback whale is gouged and covered with bloody abrasions, but is expected to survive being snared in parts of unused marine equipment on British Columbia’s central coast. The roughly three-year-old, 10 or 11-metre humpback had been entangled for about six hours on Monday by the time experts arrived to carry out the dangerous rescue, Cottrell said. He said if members of the Kitasoo First Nation and a company that owned the unused equipment had not made a timely call to the BC Marine Mammal Response Network hotline, the whale would probably not have survived. Watching the humpback show a sudden burst of energy as it shed all the ropes offered rescuers optimism that the juvenile will survive, Cottrell said of the experience he called rewarding. He urged the public to use the marine mammal reporting hotline if they see an animal that is dead or in trouble.

Source: National Post September 15, 2016 14:26 UTC