It's a precarious situation for about ten orcas off the coast of Japan: They're trapped by the ice. And: It will probably stay that way for the time being. Because as the city of Rausu explained to the broadcaster NHK, they can currently only wait for the ice to break and then they can move on.
"The temperatures are currently low, so it is possible that the killer whales were trapped between the layers of drift ice," said an official from the local weather office in Kushiro, according to a report by Kyodo News.
A video on NHK shows the orcas cavorting in a gap in the ice. According to the broadcaster, a fisherman informed the local coast guard. The city said the thick ice made it impossible to free the animals. "We have no choice but to wait for the ice to break so they can escape," an official from Rausu told NHK.
When Seiichiro Tsuchiya wanted to use a drone to study the local sea lion population, he discovered the orcas, the report continues. "I saw about 13 killer whales with their heads sticking out of a hole in the ice," he said, according to the station. “They seemed to be gasping for air, and it looked like there were three or four calves.”
Mari Kobayashi from the University of Agriculture in Tokyo said, according to NHK: "Orcas are mammals," so they have to surface to breathe through their lungs. The ice floes may have been more extensive than expected, which could have made it difficult for the animals to surface. She also pointed out that three young orcas were seen in the footage. »Killer whales are very social animals. If they stay in the area as a group to protect their young, they may slowly die of exhaustion," she said, according to Kyodo News.
In winter, parts of the sea off the coast of Japan are regularly covered with drift ice - ice that floats on the ocean's surface. According to NHK, this is not the first time that killer whales have gotten into trouble in the area. In 2005, several mammals died after becoming entangled in sea ice off Rausu.
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