. >> conservationist michael fishbach is the codirector of the great whale conservancy.a of cortez for two months every winter to photograph and observe some of the largest animals in the world, blue, fin, and humpback whales. on february 14th, 2011, he's out on the water with his wife heather watrous, 5-year-old son galen, and friends, george and whitney brazington. they're headed for a beach when he sees something in the distance. >> it looked to me sort of like part of a tree trunk floating in the desert where there are no large tree trunks ever floating in the water. and as we approached very, very slowly at that point, i could start to see floats on the water that were part of a net. >> the group discovered that tangled in that net is a young humpback whale. >> i was pretty convinced that it was dead because we did not see an ounce of movement. nothing. >> but then a breath. the humpback is alive, but unable to move. >> i could see that this whale was horribly, horribly entangled. it was just, you know, like in a straitjacket. 19 years on the water i've never seen a