They Tried to Move a Whale
One afternoon in November, just north of the small Oregon coastal town of Yachats, a juvenile humpback whale tumbled ashore. A few hours earlier, local residents had spotted it thrashing in distress half a mile out at sea, entangled in crabbing gear, with a rope bound around its pectoral fin and woven through its baleen. One resident had swum out and cut the whale free, but it didn’t turn itself around and was now lodged on sand in shallow surf.