Orca calf evades rescuers, forcing switch in tactics

ZEBALLOS, B.C.

A “very smart” orca calf trapped in a remote B.C. lagoon managed to dodge a 50-strong rescue team using boats, divers, nets and sophisticated underwater detection equipment in an attempt to save her life on Friday.

Rescue officials said that after the disappointment of the unsuccessful attempt, other capture and transport methods are being considered, including using a seine net and a bigger vessel to snare the twoyear-old female.

“This is a very smart animal and we’re going to have to look at other options,” Paul Cottrell, Fisheries Department marine mammal co-ordinator, said in an interview at the rescue site near Vancouver Island village of Zeballos.

“Today didn’t work out the way we’d hoped it to,” he said. “We have to step it up in terms of our approach and how we’re going to help the animal.”

Rescuers said they were considering trying to net the orca calf in the lagoon’s deep waters, instead of using the net to corral the animal into a large fabric sling in the shallows as they did on Friday.

Ehattesaht First Nation Chief Simon John said in a late briefing that a different boat might be needed to capture the calf in the deeps that it has been reluctant to leave since its mother died three weeks ago in the lagoon, 450 kilometres northwest of Victoria.

“A purse seine (net) is available to us, to actually achieve trying to net it ... with that it may take a bigger vessel, so we’re trying to think about the vessel available to us, to make available to the process to actually purse-seine it.”

Such strategy poses risks, both to the calf and rescuers in the water, said Cottrell, but all options were on the table.

“The planning around using a purse seine or a beach seine or a seine in a different method ... there’s going to be a lot of planning around that to make sure it’s safe for the animal and also all of us working in that environment,” he said in the briefing. “Whenever you’re working with nets, there’s a risk.”

The rescuers spent Friday trying to direct the calf into a shallow part of the three-kilometre lagoon, so she could be placed in the sling and hoisted onto a transport vehicle and taken to the open ocean.

“It was very promising, however, we weren’t able to convince her to move close enough to set out the big seine net to isolate the calf,” said Cottrell.

Flat-bottom jet boats circled an area of the lagoon where the rescue team was trying to shepherd the young orca. An Indigenous war canoe was also on the water, its paddlers singing and keeping time with a steady drum beat.

The Ehattesaht First Nation named the young orca kwiisahi’is, or Brave Little Hunter.