Prospects appear slim for a pod of killer whales trapped under a thick blanket of sea ice in northern Quebec, according to one marine life expert.
Stunning video emerged Wednesday showing as many as a dozen whales taking turns breathing in a small patch of open water in Hudson Bay, about 30 kilometres from the village of Inukjuak and many kilometres from open water.
Villagers had requested that the Canadian Coast Guard send an icebreaker to the area to clear a channel to open water, but were told that's not an option because there are none in the area.
"Even with an icebreaker that process would take a lot of time and of course it’s very stressful for the animals -- the noise, they're terrified, it is a bad situation," said David Kirby, a journalist and marine life expert who has written extensively about orcas.
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"The bay did not freeze over early this year, it was open water as recently as Christmas. The whales got in and then there was a cold snap, the ice came in and the whales got trapped, so this is an anomaly and a terrible tragedy and unfortunately I'm not sure they're going to be able to make it," he told CTV's Canada AM.
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"One suggestion is to drill a series of holes and try to walk them out to open water but right now the bay is so frozen over...even with an ice breaker that process would take a lot of time," he said.
There is a video and pictures, if you want to see them, attached to the article. (There is also a video in the Funny and Cool Pictures/Video thread.)
I hope something can be done, I personally find the situation very sad.
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Wasn't there a Drew Barrymore movie about this (based on true events from Alaska in the 1980s)?
I think their solution was to cut breathing holes in a line out to open water to lure the whales, and then a Russian icebreaker finished the job.
The story there was that it was a family of whales and the baby was sick and couldn't migrate, so the parents stayed with it until it died. At that point, the bay was frozen.
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"A pessimist thinks things can't get any worse. An optimist knows they can."
This has to happen more frequently than we know. I bet the Whales could figure it out on their own, if not send an icebreaker like FlamesAddiction said.
The solution you mention is the last quote from the article but the issue here is that they are apparently a LONG way from open water. Any solution would take a lot of time to implement.
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This has to happen more frequently than we know. I bet the Whales could figure it out on their own, if not send an icebreaker like FlamesAddiction said.
Unfortunately it is a pretty simple equation.
The Orca pod will not leave this breathing hole until they can sense other open water nearby (echolocation). This is the only breathing hole and they are a long long way from open water.
They will need to be helped in some fashion.
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That's all it took? Pfft, Drew and her crew wasted their time.
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The solution you mention is the last quote from the article but the issue here is that they are apparently a LONG way from open water. Any solution would take a lot of time to implement.
In the movie based on the true story of "Operation Breakthrough", they had to lure the whales out 8km before the icebreaker could get them. I breezed over the story here, but I didn't see if they stated how far of a distance it would be in this case.
It was kind of a crappy movie, but the real-life story is interesting. The collaborative effort put forward by the US and USSR government to save the whales at the height of the cold war, and the involvement of a big oil company, Greenpeace, local Inuit and townsfolk... plus the impact it had on whaling bans in the future.
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Originally Posted by Table 5
According to your link, apparently the wind shifted the ice and now everything is a-ok. That was easy.
Darn. I was hoping for a narwal brigade to save the day.
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"A pessimist thinks things can't get any worse. An optimist knows they can."
Transient killer whales are skilled hunters. It is not uncommon for a pod of transients to enter an area with a healthy population of seals and leave with no seals left. An 11-member pod cleaned out one colony of harbor seals in Puget Sound in matter of weeks, killing a dozen or two dozen a day. In the northern Pacific and southern Alaska, orcas are blamed for wiping out populations of sea lions and fur seals in the 1960s and 1970s and then moving to bigger Stellar sea lions, and causing their population to drop 80 percent from several hundred thousand to 30,000 and then wiped out 50,000 sea otters around the Aleutians. In Antarctica they linked with declines of southern sea lions, southern elephant seals and minke whales.
Orca Pod Trapped In Hudson Bay Under Ice Sheet - UPDATE: FREEDOM!
