See also: Right Whale Tale

n early June, Right Whale #1102 had a very bad day. While trolling the ocean surface for a zooplankton snack, mouth agape, 1102 snagged a fishing buoy line. The 50-foot 60-ton animal spun and thrashed, trying to break free. The line tightened around his snout, cutting into his hide, slicing through his blubber, and cinching the feathery threads of his baleen.

A whale-rescue crew from the Center for Coastal Studies of Provincetown, Mass., motored out to the whale in a small inflatable boat to try to cut the line. Overhead, inside a National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) plane, David Potter '74 tracked the efforts below. His office, the Protected Species Branch of the NMFS, commissions the rescue crew to help tangled whales. Most of the five or six calls a summer end in success. Eleven-02 wasn't so lucky.

The media named him Churchill. For weeks he was a fixture in the local and national news as rescuers struggled to remove the line set deep in his jaw. His health deteriorated as an infection turned his sleek black skin a pale white, which began to slough off in chunks. Over the next few weeks, as the crew launched repeated missions to untangle 1102, including a first-ever attempt at sedating so large an animal, Potter hoped for some sign that the animal might survive. Churchill swam north to Canada and rescuers followed, battling choppy seas and rigging massive tranquilizer guns. People talked about Churchill at office watercoolers. Others prayed, psychics weighed in, and a homeopathic doctor suggested giving Churchill massive doses of valerian root.

Despite all efforts, 1102 probably won't make it. The open wound caused by the fishing line created a systemic infection that he may not survive. Right whales that die eventually wash up somewhere on the North Atlantic coast. That's when Potter rolls up his sleeves. He'll study Churchill's necropsy looking for clues to help him save the most endangered large whale left on the planet.

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