...The Whale... If you read a recent front page story of the San Francisco Chronicle, you would have read about a female humpback whale who had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines. She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her body, her tail, her torso, a line tugging in her mouth. A fisherman spotted her just east of the Farallon Islands (outside the Golden Gate) and radioed an environmental group for help. Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so bad off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her.
They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her. When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, and nudged them, pushed them gently around as she was thanking them. Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives. The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth said her eyes were following him the whole time, and he will never be the same.
May you, and all those you love, be so blessed and fortunate to be surrounded by people who will help you get untangled from the things that are binding you. And, may you always know the joy of giving and receiving gratitude. I pass this on to you, my friends, in the same spirit.
While perhaps exaggerated a bit, the basic story passes the "smell" test and happened in 2005. The whale in the picture, however, is certainly not the one that was tangled up in the ropes - there is not a cut mark or line chaffe anywhere on that whale in the picture. Those marks would be obvious if the whale was as entangled as said. Not to mention that the water where this incident occurred is not that crystal clear by any means. There are wicked currents around the Farallon Islands, it's cold, and the water tends to be green and full of guess what? Great white sharks that feed on the resident sea lion population.
Still, if the story makes you feel good, then who am I to burst anybody's bubble! Free Willy, baby!! :puff:
I'm sure that the picture that came with the story was not meant to try and fool anyone. It's just a symbolic picture of two intelligent species reaching out to each other. It's not "likely true"; it is a true story with real people telling there feelings about it.
Whale experts say it's nice to think that the whale was thanking its rescuers, but nobody really knows what was on its mind. "You hate to anthropomorphize too much, but the whale was doing little dives and the guys were rubbing shoulders with it," Menigoz said. "I don't know for sure what it was thinking, but it's something that I will always remember. It was just too cool."
What do you mean "real or not"? I posted the original story twice, with real pictures of them trying to get the ropes off of the Whale. If you mean is it "real" that the Whale was thanking them, maybe.
