Puerto Vallarta, Mexico - On December 29th 2011, a group of friends went out fishing in four different boats: Jaime Barragan in his boat "Poca Madre" with his son Jaimillo and his friend Nahum; Humberto Mendoza in his panga "Freedom" with his wife Jani and her 8 year old nephew, Emiliano; Mario Mucharraz in his boat "Makaira," and Martel and I in our boat "Vida Loca."

Around midday Humberto reported on the radio that he had found a humpback whale wrapped in a fishing net swimming with a lot of difficulty and desperate to free herself.

Humberto reported it to the Marina Armada de Mexico in San Blas and immediately they sent a patrol boat with personal to organize the rescue. Many other boats also went to the location. When we got there this is what we found: the whale was swimming with the net all wrapped around her body, and next to her, swimming free and always by her side, her mate, who eventually would go under, pushing her up to help her breathe.

The Marina Armada de Mexico Patrol arrived around 1:30 pm, and the Capitan asked us to approach them. Martel, Jani and Emiliano went into the Patrol Boat for safety, and four marines and a biologist got into two of our boats because it would be easier to handle the maneuvers.

Then the rescue started in total improvisation, as none of us, including the marines, had ever been in a similar situation.

I had a carbineer in my boat and we decided to tie it up to the tip of the 50 meters rope that the Patrol had. Then with a lot of caution (in the beginning, not so much after a while) we got close to the whale and hooked up the carbineer to the net wrapped around the whale. After that, we passed the other tip of the rope to the patrol boat, so they could tie it up to the bow of the patrol boat and pull it back. With this tension the net started to come apart, little by little, and came off the whale's back. As soon as the whale felt more free, she went underwater and we had to wait till she came up to breathe.

We did this for five hours (until sunset) also cutting the net with knifes. With this procedure we removed as much of the net from the whale as we could. (Maybe 70%.) We really tried our best under the circumstances, but the net wrapped on her tail was two or three meters under the surface of the water making it us impossible for us to reach it. It was so heavy, that the whale almost couldn’t bring it up, so it was definitely out of our reach.

Being so close for so long to a 40 ton animal is something difficult to describe, and in one point it was fun, because we were no more than one meter (3 feet) from her blow holes, so with every breath she took, we ended up soaking wet. That was without a doubt a shower with the most water pressure I have ever had.

Finally, when the sun went down, we got ready to come back. We were not very happy, knowing she still had net on her tail, but it was impossible to keep on helping her. We ran back the 18 miles, tired and in total darkness, our only light of reference being the bow light on the Poca Madre boat.

At home (Tropico Trailer Park) our friend Curtis was ready to pull us out with his truck, and Christina together with Maquis Michel (Jaime’s wife), his daughter Ana Pau, and her friend Sofi, were waiting for us with signal lights to help us get the boats onto the trailers, and some delicious hamburgers they had made for us.

The next day we went out fishing again, and found two smaller boats of the Marina Armada de Mexico, now with scuba divers and lots of marines that were looking for the whale. I just found out two days ago that they did find her and freed her completely from the net, and she is now swimming free. Mario Mucharraz got this information from his brother who is an Admiral in the Marina Armada de Mexico.

It was an unforgettable experience to all of us that participated in it. Something I will never forget is the solidarity of her mate. Never, not for a second, did he leave her alone.