Ecologist Dmitry Lisitsyn: it is highly likely that the killer whales off the coast of Hokkaido were saved. But the fact that they could be captured again somewhere, in some other place, further from the coast, where people no longer see them, is quite real, he said.
Earlier, media reported that killer whales blocked by drifting ice could survive. The further from coast, the less the ice compacts, so animals have more opportunities to find cracks and gaps even where the ice is quite dense.