Daring rescue of whale off Farallones--Humpback nuzzled her saviors in thanks

SF Gate ^ | December 14, 2005 | Peter Fimrite

[Auntie Mame]

Just ran across this article from December 2005. There's a lot more to the article if you click the link.

My daughter was recently in Hawaii and on her first dive, three whales, a big one, a medium-sized one and one that was obviously a baby spied her and her companions and swam around them for about five minutes.

[mlc9852]

That must have been an awesome experience.

[cmsgop]

Awwwwwwww!

[YaYa123]

While I do think we've gone a little overboard in giving human attributes to animals, and I realized it when I tried to rescue a cute little mouse from the mouth of my Siamese cat, this was a very nice Sunday read....thank you.

[Lunatic Fringe]

Whales are truly remarkable creatures.

[nuconvert]

Nice story. Thanks

[martin_fierro]

[Edit35]

Aye', but have ye seen the Great White Whale.

This gold dabloon to whomever sees her first....


She breeeeeeches.

[cmsgop]

[CindyDawg]

A happy ending:') I would have cut the rope in her mouth last though.

[Dallas59]

But they're not out of danger yet..the Japanese kill and eat whales...

[patton]

Astonishinly, the whad had commited a felony - disturbing crab pots.

We really do have too many laws...

[Auntie Mame]

You funny boy. LOL

[BenLurkin]

Good one!

[CindyDawg]

Yeah and these guys still may get in trouble with the environmental people. Swimming in a endangered species area? Touching wild life? What else? Probably a 100 "don't laws".

[oldfart]

I once had a small encounter with a 'Humpie'. I was working on a fishing boat in Southeast Alaska when a pod of whales passed nearby. I and another deckhand took the skiff, a 16 foot Boston Whaler, out to get a closer look. We ran ahead of them and turned off the motor to see what would happen. One by one, they rolled out of the water, taking a breath through their blow-holes and looking at us with a big eye. The last one came closest and, instead of rolling as the others had done, it dived, letting the massive tail flukes wave in the air almost over our heads. That was, far and away, the most impressive thing to happen to me in the years I worked there.

[texasmountainman]

Just think how many starving children could have been fed with 50 tons of whale meat.

[AnnaZ]

What a lovely story.

(And screw you, keyword abusers.)

;^)

[Auntie Mame]

Wow! Great story about a once-in-a-lifetime experience. My daughter said that after the encounter with the whales right at the beginning of the dive, when they discussed it later they said they should have just called off the rest of the dive, NOTHING could surpass that experience.

[LZ_Bayonet]

I didn't key "anthropomorphization", but it actually came up with three hits.