I get a call there’s a whale 18 miles out, tangled up and barely afloat

Us dive buddies grab gear and head straight out through the Golden Gate in Mick’s boat

Two hours out, just empty sea, might have to just head back

But wait, over there, buoys and seagulls, and what’s that sliver of black?

We jump in, good lord, she’s big as a bus, something pulling her tail straight down

She’s worn out, holding up a huge mess of crab traps, got to weigh two thousand pounds

There’s rope round her head, cross her back and her fins, down her tail, round her eye and her mouth

I swim in slow, her huge eye follows, I pull my dive knife out

It’s cut after cut, you really have to saw, the rope so strong and so tight

After hours at last I cut the right one and the whole mess sinks out of sight

All at once the whale is just gone, we’re whooping and yelling she’s free

But I look down and that fifty ton humpback is rising up right at me

She's up and looming so close, 18 inches away

Just looks and looks and looks at me, so still and silent and gray

Then swims to the next with the same long gaze, and the next, and visits us all

Being in the presence of something so great, it makes you feel so small

Think what you want but I swear that whale was thanking us every one

I'll take that to my grave, the gratification I feel for what we’ve done

Now it’s dusk, the water glass flat, just us and the boat and the whale

She wants to stay but we have to go, home to tell the tale