At 45 feet long, a humpback is a large needle—but it’s hidden in an even larger haystack in the Pacific Ocean off the ­islands of Hawaii.

But when an entangled whale is found, we rely on the help of the on-water community to report sightings to their local hotlines; NOAA’s Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary responds right away. I’m at the helm of these rescues as the natural resources management specialist.

WATCH: Divers Rescue Entangled Manta

We aren’t allowed to get into the water with the animals—it’s all boat-based—because of the risks to whales and responders. You never know how they’ll react, and they likely don’t know you’re there to help. We’ve cut gear off scores of whales in Hawaii to free them, and when things go right, there’s nothing like it.

Whales get caught in anything and ­everything: fishing gear, mooring, and ­anchor lines, and marine debris. Sometimes they’ve dragged it thousands of miles. The biggest threat is not drowning, but starvation.

While we try to free individual whales from life-threatening entanglements, our ultimate goal is to answer the questions of who, when, where, why and how to reduce threats in the long run.

To cut the whales free, we have a team of six to 10 people who use special knives attached to poles. Last year, we had a juvenile whale off Maui with a mouth entanglement. On the first day, it became agitated and we had to stand down. We’d attached a transmitter to the entangling gear, however, so we were able to locate it the next day. The whale had calmed down, and we were able to successfully pull the remaining gear from its mouth.

After we freed it, it breached several times. Some people think such behavior is the whale thanking the response team. Another possibility is that it’s trying to remove dead skin and animals from its body as a type of grooming. Either way, seeing a once-entangled whale free of gear and throwing 40 tons nearly clear of the water is the sign of a job well done.