A Boater’s Guide to Marine Life Rescue

CALIFORNIA一 A sunny day out on the water, a slight chop to the wave, and a clear view of Catalina across the horizon. A boater thinks they see something bobbing in the waves but they can’t quite determine if it is just a white cap or a piece of trash that accidentally dumped into the ocean. They get a little closer out of curiosity, and the idea of pulling out the trash before a marine animal can ingest it or become entangled in the piece of mankind that doesn’t belong in the ocean. It is too late; the piece of fishing gear has been tangled with a humpback whale that was on its way up the coast during its migration. In its 2020 West Coast Whale Entanglement Summary, NOAA reported that there were 13 confirmed reports of whales entangled in some type of fishing gear off the California coast. But there are more than just whales living off the coast that have found themselves entangled in garbage, fishing lines, crab gear, and whatever else is in the ocean. The NOAA West Coast Marine Mammal Stranding Network was established in the early 1980s under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and has been working...