Well we’re following breaking news Rescuers are now planning a last Stitch effort to airlift and save a stranded young Orca off the coast of Vancouver Island the animal has been trapped in a shallow Lagoon for more than a week unable to escape because of low tides and a sandb bar its pregnant mother
Became breached and died while hunting uh while seal hunting Rescuers have tried to Tech many techniques that is to save the young Orca over the last several days from banging metal pipes to playing whale recordings to urge the calf out to open Waters my next guest
Has been working hard to get the calf out Paul cutell is a Marine Mammal rescuer coordinator with fisheries and oceans Canada he joins me from Zabo uh British Columbia so Paul thanks so much for taking the time uh Le let’s talk about your your team which is actively
Monitoring the calf what’s the latest on her condition yeah so we had drones up in the air today to uh Monitor and assess the calf and we’re taking pictures uh daily to get uh uh through looked at through photogrametry by photogrametry experts just to make sure that the
Animal’s body condition and health is is uh is not deteriorating we we’ve heard that your team is actively trying to uh feed the calf how are those efforts going yeah so we were just looking to see if there was was a possibility about supplementing the diet of this animal
There’s um you know in terms of mar mammals there’s a the odd seal in this tidal Lagoon but overall um there’s there’s not a lot of food there for this animal and the animal was seen um earlier in the week um ingesting a bird so it it is actively looking for food so
How concerning is it that the calf is not eating regularly uh and that humans need to step in to coax her to eat okay I think we’ve lost uh our can you hear me oh sorry I missed that could you say that game yeah I’m just wondering uh
If it’s concerning to you that uh you know he the calf is not eating as regularly yeah I mean we’re that’s we um the goal has been to to try to persuade the calf out of the Lagoon the past week or so using Tech that have been successful previously but unfortunately
That hasn’t worked so yeah we we are concerned that the times ticking with this animal and that’s why we’re monitoring its its health and assessing that and and also putting in place um capture and transport um uh plan to in in case we have to move this animal and
Try to reunite it with its pod so talk to me a little bit more about that capture and transfer uh protocol what what would that look like so we’ve got uh you know many different options within that but uh you know the um you know the loog L sorry
The logistics are still being worked out in terms of uh the equipment and the personnel and we’re we’re looking at bringing in some additional experts um yeah it would it would involve uh looking animal and then transporting the animal um further um you know there’s a few different modes that we could look
At for doing that by by net pen uh or by uh transport to the outer Coast where the animals more likely to um then meet up with its its family pod so we’re we’re looking at all those contingencies and you can imagine this is a short time
Frame for us to put this together so we’re um we’re still working on all the details let me ask you this and we’ll tell the audience uh at home right now that you know the connection’s not uh the the best here because obviously you’re you’re very rural uh BC but in
Terms of the timeline and how much of a Race Against Time is this how long do you think that you have to get this calf to safety to open Waters uh before time will run out yeah so that’s why we’re we’re doing drone Imaging and and photographing the
The calf daily to monitor its health and and assess it uh so right now the the animal in terms of the activity level and behavior um it it’s looking looking good but of course we know that the food source in the lagoon is is not great for
It so we are um we are concerned and and we have these contingencies for this um capture and transport and and we can Implement that pretty quickly but we still have a few things that we have to do and and get approvals we’re working with the aadat first nation and new
Chalou first nation which has been amazing in terms of the collaboration um to get this done and it’s you know considering you know we’re we’re 11 days in and and we’ve already got a draft plan together it’s pretty amazing and it goes to show just how um
How resilient um and uh the folks are here to work together and and make this successful we’re all it’s been a tough week and a half for everyone with with what’s happened but you know we’re all working together and we’re going to bring in additional experts too with
With what we’re proposing if if we need to to capture and transport the animal to the outer coast and put it in a net pen until uh the family unit hopefully passes by and then we can reunite them that’s that’s the plan uh draft plan that we’re looking at and putting and
Implementing hopefully if we need to in the near future okay Paul we got to leave it there but thank you for this update we hope uh the best for you and your team in the next uh couple of days here that we can get uh some good news
In terms of that calf Paul cotell is a Marine Mammal rescuer coordinator with fisheries and oceans Canada who was working to help free the trapped killer whale CAF in BC
Eleven days ago, a killer whale calf got stuck in a remote tidal lagoon off northern Vancouver Island. Efforts to rescue it haven’t been successful, and marine mammal rescuer Paul Cottrel says they may have to resort to airlifting the calf as there is not enough food in the lagoon.
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