Beached Whale Clings to Life : Rescue: Despite efforts on Newport shore, there’s little hope the creature--brought to Sea World--will survive.

Dozens of volunteers waged a frantic seven-hour battle Saturday to rescue a sickly 13 1/2-foot, baby minke whale that washed up on a rock jetty in Newport Beach, but officials feared the animal would die even as veterinarians struggled throughout the night to save it.

Preliminary tests showed that the whale, dubbed “Rocky” by his rescuers because it kept hitting the jetty just off shore, was suffering from an infection of unknown origin and was at least 662 pounds underweight.

Beachings of this type of whale are rare in Southern California, officials said, and Rocky’s discovery drew hundreds of onlookers as volunteers befriended the whale, talking to the creature and covering it with wet towels to revive it.

“Chances are very slim that he’ll survive,” said Tom Goff, curator of mammals at Sea World in San Diego, where the whale was taken for care. “Things look kind of grim at this point. He is in critical condition.”

Besides the infection, Goff said the whale suffered “quite a bit of bruising” from being tossed about on the rocks.

Veterinarians were treating the mammal with antibiotics and he was hand-fed a small meal of fish late Saturday. Sea World workers labored in a holding tank to guide the whale through the water because it showed difficulty maintaining its equilibrium.

Earlier in the day, the whale’s surprise beach appearance drew hundreds of people who shouted “Free Willy!” and “Save Willy!,” referring to the hit summer movie about a boy who befriends a whale. The gathering swelled as rescuers rolled the 1,338-pound blue-gray mammal onto a tarp.

The canvas sling then was suspended by ropes from a skip loader that crawled 100 yards from the surf’s edge, across the sunbaked beach to a flatbed truck waiting for the long trip south to Sea World.

Even then, rescuers expressed little hope for the whale’s survival.

“He’s underweight, his respiration seems fast and it’s a tough drive,” Goff said at the scene as he watched crew members spray water to keep the whale’s skin moist.

Don Crawford, a radio station manager from Newport Beach, said he discovered the whale on the rocks between 6:30 and 7 a.m. during his morning run on the beach near 56th Street in West Newport. Surfers also reported finding the whale and notifying authorities.

Working with other swim-suited volunteers for more than seven hours before the Sea World crew arrived, Crawford poured water on the whale from a red plastic pail.

Crawford helped cover it with wet towels to prevent sunburn. “I was in shock,” Crawford said of his discovery. “We’ve seen other fish but this was surprising. . . . This is about the closest I could come to saving a human’s life, and I guess you could say that I felt it’s more important than sitting at home watching TV or reading a book.”

Other volunteers, including whale experts from the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum and the American Cetacean Society, directed and participated in the rescue effort along with lifeguards, beach-goers and animal control officers from the city of Newport Beach. They said Crawford and the whale bonded, partly as a result of his being at the whale’s side for seven hours, petting and talking to it.

“It’s something to see--in every rescue there’s always someone who becomes the animal’s best friend,” said John Heyning, a curator from the museum who came with his wife, Corinne.

Lifeguards, city workers and animal control officers splashing in the surf put wet towels over the whale, less than 1 year old, to prevent sunburn and overheating. “That’s the biggest problem--the heat,” one worker said. “That’s what does the most harm.”

The whale probably beached itself during the 1:09 a.m. high tide, Heyning said.

Workers removed rocks near the whale so it would not further injure himself, and eventually they floated the mammal into the water. But the whale submerged and then came up back near the rocks. That’s when rescuers decided to push the whale onto the beach and cover it with wet towels until the Sea World crew arrived.

“We were afraid it might be further injured on the rocks if we didn’t do this,” Heyning explained. “With another high tide coming in, he would have been pushed back here anyway. This whale is sick and disoriented. We can see that it has parasites, although we don’t know whether that’s the main problem here.”

Heyning said it’s rare to find a live minke whale on a Southern California beach. “You can see them off the islands out in the channel, or from a boat, but almost never from the shoreline here,” he said.

“Normally when whales beach, they die at sea and wash up dead. We get several of those every year,” Heyning said. “A live, stranded baleen whale such as this is fairly rare. In my 18 years here this is the first time I’ve seen one.

“They get sick and as the illness progresses they get disoriented and they accidentally just hit the shore,” Heyning said. “When you push an animal like this out to sea, they typically don’t do very well and come back to shore again. Pushing that animal back out to sea would have resulted in its certain death. The only hope it had was being transported to a facility where they could treat it.”

Minkes are the smallest of the baleen whales and grows to about 27 to 30 feet in length. They have blue-gray tops and white bottoms.

Lifeguards said it was the first whale beached in Newport in recent memory.

Despite the frequent sightings of whales along the California coast, beachings aren’t common.

A 45-foot fin whale that had been accidentally killed in Los Angeles Harbor washed up on Huntington State Beach in August, 1991. A gray whale that beached itself in June, 1989, in Huntington Beach also died. Another dead gray whale, 25 feet long, was washed ashore in Huntington Beach in 1987.

Among the onlookers in Newport Beach on Saturday, Jeanna Adams, 13, of Toledo, Ohio, was tearful and apprehensive. On vacation in Newport Beach with her family for the fifth year in a row, she said: “It’s sad to see him all covered up. But now I feel he’s going to be safe. I just wish I could have helped.”

As the Sea World truck started to pull out, Goff turned to the rescue workers. “You’ve done a good job,” he said. “If this whale doesn’t make it, it won’t be because people didn’t care.”

Times staff writer Jodi Wilgoren contributed to this report.

A ‘Rocky’ Rescue

1:09 a.m.--Whale experts believe whale is carried into rock jetty by high tide.

6:40 a.m.--Don Crawford, a resident of 65th Street in Newport Beach, sees whale caught on rocks as he takes his morning run.

11 a.m.-- Rescuers attempt to float the whale dubbed “Rocky” back to sea, but attempts fail.

2:20 p.m.--”Rocky” is carefully maneuvered onto a truck’s foam-cushioned flatbed.

2:30 p.m.--The truck departs for Sea World.

5:20 p.m.--”Rocky” arrives at Seal World and an extensive physical exam begins.