Jonathan Quispe didn’t hesitate.
When he saw the whale trapped and writhing among the strands of a fishing net somewhere in the Peruvian sea, he took off his shirt, put on a diving mask, and jumped into the water without an oxygen tank. He carried only a knife. The whale made sounds that he described as moans, and that was the signal he needed to act. During the rescue, as he cut the net thread by thread, he briefly ended up on the animal’s back, as if riding it, in an image that eventually went around the world.
What Quispe later recounted on Latina’s program Arriba Mi Gente is what turns this story into something bigger than a viral video: the net that trapped the whale belonged to his own fishing team. And it was not the first time he had done something like that. He had previously freed dolphins and turtles tangled in the same fishing gear that he himself uses to make a living.
“I had to free her”, he said, as if there were no other possible option. For him, saving these animals is not a heroic act: it is simply what needs to be done.