An orca stranded on rocks off the coast of British Columbia, and crying pitifully, was saved by volunteers who kept the creature alive until high tide returned and it could swim back to sea.
Members of The Cetacean Lab, a research station that is part of a non-profit group,
For Whales, told CBC they received a call Wednesday about the stranded orca, which was wedged onto rocks on a northern cost of British Columbia.
For more than six hours, volunteers kept the orca cool using sea-soaked blankets, CBC said.
On its Whale Point Facebook page, the group reported, "She cried often, which tore at our hearts, but as the tide came up there were many cheers as this whale was finally free. "
"We decided the best thing to do would be to keep her cool, that meant to put water on her body and we used blankets and sheets," Hermann Meuter, co-founder of Cetacean Lab, told CBC. "It was the only thing we could do. At first she was stressed, you could see that her breathing was getting a little faster.”
But within 20 minutes, the orca calmed down, he said, adding that it took the orca about 45 minutes to get itself off the rocks as the tide rose.
The Whale Point FB page said the creature was identified as T069A2, a 9-year-old orca.
Endangered orcas frequently capture the imagination of the public, and recent photographs of a playful young orca went viral online. The pictures, taken by photographer Clint Rivers, encouraged the Pacific Whale Watch Association because they showed a "baby boom" in a local pod, with four calves born
since December, Global News reported.
"I’ve never seen a baby whale breach like J50’s been doing," Michael Harris, executive director of PWWA, told Global News. "Her energy is astounding – I guess not unlike my small kids. She’s constantly leaping into the air, and often curling up and doing belly flops."