Stranded killer whale survives with the help of the good Samaritans

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Alaskan boaters stumbled upon a strange sight Thursday: a 20-foot killer whale that was ashore, stuck in a crevice of rock.

Julie Ver, a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in an email that an orca had been spotted by someone on a boat on Prince of Wales off the coast of British Columbia.

The US Coast Guard’s first call came at about 9 a.m. about the whale, which was stranded on rugged beaches at least four feet above the tide line.

Chance Strickland, the captain of a private Alaskan yacht, and his crew soon docked ashore to spray the whale with seawater. The fog kept the whale cool and frightened off the birds, which huddled nearby in the trees, waiting for a chance to eat the orca alive.

Mr. Strickland and his crew had hoped the 13-year-old whale would float back to sea when the tide rose that afternoon. Mr. Strickland could hear the orca calling out to the killer whales swimming in the area.

“I don’t talk much about whales,” he said, “but they don’t seem to get really pissed off.”

People stopped on other boats with water and buckets to put out the whale. Mr. Strickland and his crew said they gave the whale ample berth in case it started flipping.

“Tears were falling from his eyes,” he said. “It was very sad.”

He said Mr. Strickland left the island after wildlife officials came to relieve him and his crew.

The tide finally came in around 2 p.m. local time, and the sea waters eventually rose high enough that the whale, known as T146D, floated again, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said.

“She moved a little slowly at first, and got to know a little bit before she swam away,” said Mrs.

It was a happy ending for the whale, who returned to sea about six hours after it was spotted ashore. Canadian authorities have confirmed that the orca is the big killer whale of the “West Coast Transit” population.

This beach came just one day after a strong 8.2-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of southwest Alaska. However, the earthquake, which was the largest in the country in 50 years, did not cause the whale to become stranded, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said.

Toa, an orphaned baby killer whale, suffered a different fate than T146D after it washed ashore in New Zealand this month. Although conservationists fed the whale in a makeshift pond and volunteers spent days cruising the coast to find the Toa family, the orca eventually died.

In one of the largest whale beach cases ever recorded globally, last year Australian rescuers rescued 108 out of 470 whales that landed on a vast and remote sandbank in Tasmania’s rugged Macquarie Harbour.

Experts said live whale strands are unusual but do happen from time to time.

Five whales, including T146D, have been recorded as stranded on the West Coast in the past two decades, said Jared Towers, a researcher with the Canadian Fisheries and Oceans Administration, and Bay Cetology, a killer whale research organization.

“These whales were hunting seals or sea lions, and they made a mistake and stumbled, and then the tide ebbed,” he said.

He said that every whale except one escaped stranding. While beach orcas are on shore, they are at risk of overheating, crushing by gravity, or being attacked by birds or bears.

Mr. Towers said it is difficult to say how long the whale would have survived had the tide not come. He said he heard about a whale that lived after waiting 11 hours for the water to rise. Because the T146D was still a juvenile, he said, his body was small enough to not be crushed by gravity, adding that he survived shore with only superficial cuts and abrasions.

He said the whale might have been waiting for the tide to rise after it got stuck in the rocks. However, the tide decreased instead, so the orca was separated for a few hours from other whales in the area.

“There’s a very good chance that they’re okay with them now,” he said, “and he’s just leading a normal life after spending some time out of the water.”

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