It was a whale of a rescue tale.
Dramatic video shows a trapped whale splashing its way to freedom after a Norwegian coast guard crew cuts the monster-sized mammal loose from ropes.
“Are you holding my feet?” a crew member says in Norwegian, as he cautiously leans over the side of the ship KV Bison to cut ropes tangled around the massive whale’s tail and an orange buoy.
The video was shot in the Barents Sea during a 10-to-15 minute rescue on Wednesday, a coast guard official told Reuters. It was posted to the coast guard’s Twitter account a day later.
“We could see the whale was exhausted, it was completely still,” Lt. Captain Raymond Isehaug told the news service Friday in a phone interview from the vessel.
“We approached it very slowly so as not to stress it… It was scared and was behaving aggressively.”
He briefly thought about sending divers into the water to cut the rope under the temperamental whale, which appears to be a humpback — but he decided against it because of its agitated state.
Once free, the whale flips its tail and smacks the surface of the water as it dives below before emerging for one last splash that sets the boat rocking, the video shows.
With Post wires