November 14, 2018 — As they headed back toward the central California coast after fishing for slime eel in the Pacific Ocean, Sam Synstelien and Nicholas Taron made a troubling discovery: a humpback whale was entangled in a buoy’s rope, frantically trying to free itself.
Synstelien immediately called the U.S. Coast Guard but was told it might take a few hours for someone to get there. The two commercial fishermen thought that could be too long for the whale to survive its predicament.
“(The whale) was just swimming in counter-clockwise circles,” Taron told NBC Bay Area. “You could tell he was stressed and being held to the bottom.”
Instead of waiting for the Coast Guard or leaving the whale behind, Synstelien and Taron decided to try to save its life. They cranked up the volume on the radio of their 27-foot-long boat (aptly named “Persistence”) and shouted into the microphone to get the frantic, 40-foot-long humpback’s attention.
“We were screaming at the whale, ‘You’re either going to help us out and quit swimming away or else, like, good luck,’” Taron said.
The two were able to cut through the rope wound around the whale’s tail, but the rope still entangled its midsection. Synstelien decided to try to free it himself. As Taron recorded a video on his cell phone, Synstelien jumped onto the whale and shimmied up its back.