June 13, 2018 — The morning fog in Moss Landing is still thick when Peggy Stap and her volunteer whale rescue crew load up their GPS-equipped buoys, flying knives and repurposed lacrosse helmets.
It’s just after 9 a.m. on this Tuesday morning when Stap steers her 40-foot boat into the harbor. Her 13-year-old rescue dog, a local social media celebrity known as “Whiskie the Whale Spotter,” shares the captain’s seat. After a quick safety check—calm water, good weather—Stap relays the latest radio chatter to her small team of researchers, photographers and curious visitors.
“Tim’s got a gray whale that doesn’t look healthy,” Stap says. She revs the engine and heads for the open waters of the Monterey Bay.
Following up on vague reports from whale-watching boats, fishermen and park rangers has become a near-daily routine for the 63-year-old Michigan transplant. As founding director of the nonprofit research and rescue group Marine Life Studies, Stap has carved out a niche as the Monterey Bay’s go-to first responder for injured whales.
Lately, that means helping to cut loose more and more of the 60,000-pound animals who get caught in crab lines, fishing nets and other ocean hazards. It’s a task that has grown increasingly daunting since 2006, when Stap and Mary Whitney of Carmel’s Fluke Foundation started an early version of the Whale Entanglement Team (WET) that now struggles to keep pace with calls about animals in distress.
“We’ve had three entanglements just in the past couple of weeks,” says Laura Kasa, former director of Save Our Shores and a consultant to the recently formed Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Foundation. She says the new organization is prioritizing fundraising for entanglement to ensure rescue crews have necessary supplies.