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“You have three seconds to make the cut before the whale dives again,” said Captain Mike Reddington of the DFO. “If you miss, you might hook the knife into the whale’s flesh. If you panic, you cut the tail off.” On April 27, 2023, at approximately 2:15 PM PDT, in the calm waters just north of Sucia Island, the team succeeded. As the whale rolled to breathe, rescuer Katie Morgan leaned over the bow of the inflatable boat. With a single, decisive sawing motion, she cut the primary loop of rope.

The whale, estimated to be a 2-year-old male, was not the typical "Sounders" (the group of 12-15 gray whales that forget to migrate and stay in the region all summer). He was a transient migrant. But what caught the researchers’ eyes wasn't the whale's presence; it was the bright orange buoy trailing behind its tail. 2023-Patos-

Note: If you were referring to a different "Patos" (e.g., a place, a surname, or a specific scientific event), please clarify. Based on marine biology and wildlife rescue records, this refers to the high-profile rescue of a gray whale named "Patos" in the Salish Sea. SAN JUAN ISLAND, Wash. – In the early spring of 2023, as gray whales made their annual migration from the lagoons of Baja California to the feeding grounds of the Arctic, one individual took a detour that turned into a nightmare. The whale, later nicknamed “Patos” by local marine biologists, became the center of a multi-week, international rescue operation that highlighted both the resilience of wildlife and the deadly legacy of ocean debris. The Discovery near Patos Island On April 21, 2023, a team from the Center for Whale Research (CWR) spotted an unusual sight during a routine survey of the northern Salish Sea. Just off the shores of Patos Island —a small, remote marine state park in the San Juan Islands of Washington state—a juvenile gray whale was struggling to swim. “You have three seconds to make the cut