NBCNEWS.COM - Eleven killer whales are "locked in" by ice in a Canadian bay, with only a
small area of open water for them to surface, the mayor of a nearby village said
as he appealed for help to save the marine mammals.
A hunter found the killer whales, also known as orcas, on Wednesday morning
in Hudson Bay, in northeastern Canada. Two of the orcas appear to be adults; the
remaining nine are smaller in size, said Petah Inukpuk, mayor of Inukjuak, an
Inuit village home to 1,800, in Quebec. Other reports said there were 12 orcas
in the pod.
A video taken by villager Clement Rousseau showed the opening to be just
large enough for a few of the orcas to surface at a time. A team from Canada's
fisheries department is expected to arrive at the ice hole on Thursday, according
to Canada's CBC.ca.
"They are in a confined area," Inukpuk told NBC News on Wednesday, noting
that "there is no more open water."
"From time to time, they are in a panic state and other times they are gone
for a long period of time, probably looking for another open water (space) which
they are unable to find," Inukpuk said. "They keep going back to the same
spot."
Killer whales are highly social and typically travel in groups from two to
15, though there can be larger groups, according to the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration. They are most numerous in colder waters, such as
Antarctica, Alaska and Norway, although they can also be found in temperate and
tropical waters.
Inukpuk said killer whales were not spotted in the area every summer, but
every second or third one. But this is "the first time that they are locked in,"
he said.
The winter was unusual this year in that the bay did not freeze up as it
normally does at the end of November or beginning of December, the mayor
said.
There was open water after Christmas but "about three days ago it got really
cold and there is no more open water presently," he said.
Deborah Giles, a graduate student researcher at the University of California,
Davis, who has studied killer whales for eight years, said the main issue facing
the orcas would be if the air hole remained open.
"It is absolutely tragic to think about this, you know, if that does close
up," she said. "That's really what their biggest problem is right now."
Among the ideas discussed to save the animals was using an icebreaker, she
said, although Inukpuk said such equipment was in Antarctica at this time of
year. A Canadian fisheries official told
CBC.ca that some icebreakers were being used in the Saint Lawrence River,
where three commercial ships got stuck this week.
Geoff Carroll, a wildlife biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and
Game who helped release two California gray whales in a similar situation that
made international headlines in 1988, said his experience in the effort known as
"Operation Breakthrough" also showed the power of other methods.
"Our experience up here was that it seemed like the local knowledge and the
low-tech approaches to working with the whales were the ones that worked best,"
Carroll said. "It seemed like there were lots of high-tech efforts made to get
those whales out and they kind of failed one after the other. What really worked
was when we got local guys with chainsaws cutting one hole after another and we
could kind of walk the whales out that way."
Operation Breakthrough, which was chronicled in a 2012 movie "Big Miracle,"
was a success because Eskimo whalers cut more than a half mile of holes for the
whales to travel through on their way to open sea in Alaska. Two Soviet
icebreakers helped by crushing a critical thick wall of ice that blocked their
path, according to a story on the rescue by the Los
Angeles Times. Oil workers and environmentalists also assisted in the rescue
effort.
The two gray whales were released after 20 days, although a third, smaller
whale drowned near one of the air holes. There have been reports of other whales
getting stuck beneath the ice, Giles said, but she said it was an anomaly for
killer whales – technically in the oceanic dolphin family – which tend to hunt
around the ice.
However, one pod of orcas died in 2005 in the Japanese Arctic after an ice
hole closed, according
to CBC.ca. There have been some other cases, too, said Paul Wade, a research
fisheries biologist at NOAA's National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle.
Giles said food would likely not yet be a problem because the larger orcas
should be able to survive on their fat stores for several weeks. But survival is
less certain for the smaller mammals, including one that appeared to be nursing.
She noted that the animals may not be in distress, as the adult males could be
seen engaging in the normal behavior of "spyhopping" -- or shooting straight out
of the water.
"It's possible that they are doing that not necessarily to get a bigger
breath as somebody had indicated but rather to look around," Giles said, adding
that killer whales can see equally well above water as below.
"It's also possible that they coming up as often as there is (is) a way to
keep that ice open," she said. "They certainly, I would say, are smart enough to
recognize that this is their breathing hole and they … don't want to have that
close up."
Wade, the fisheries biologist, said he watched videos of the killer whales
and thought some were engaging in normal behavior while other appeared agitated.
He said it looks like the pod includes two adult males, several juveniles and
female adults or younger adult males.
"There are cases where whales have been able to keep holes open just by the
continually coming up every minute or so," he said. "It seemed like they could
probably keep that open although it's not something killer whales do a lot
of."
Wade also questioned how they got caught in the area.
"Why these whales hung around so long is a mystery," he said. But he added:
"Even the types of whales that live in the ice a lot or much closer to the ice
more frequently than killer whales -- they make mistakes as well."
Mayor Inukpuk said they would like to create an opening for the animals to
move out. He said he would be on a conference call Thursday with other parties
to discuss the possibilities. Canada's fisheries department said in an email
that it was working closely with its partners and other experts to assess the
situation.
Although the killer whales compete with human hunters for seal meat in an
area where there are no supermarkets or grocery stores, Inukpuk said the
villagers' main concern was the orcas' survival. Many residents have visited the
area, which is 20 miles from the village and one mile from the coastline.
"They have a right to survive and hopefully someone will help us to get that
(to) happen," he said. "The weather today is not so cold, so they (the killer
whales) may keep the open area as it is by their movements.
"But tomorrow could be a different story."
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