Trapped orcas freed when ice shifts - San Francisco Chronicle

Montreal --

About a dozen killer whales trapped under sea ice appeared to be free after the ice shifted, village officials in Canada's remote north said Thursday, while residents who feared they would get stuck elsewhere hired a plane to track them down.

The whales' predicament in the frigid waters of Hudson Bay made international headlines, and locals had been planning a rescue operation with chainsaws and drills before the mammals slipped away.

Tommy Palliser said two hunters from remote Inukjuak village reported that the waters had opened up around the area where the cornered whales had been bobbing frantically for air around a single, truck-size hole in the ice. Officials said shifting winds might have pushed the ice away.

But fears remained that the whales might have been trapped elsewhere by the ever-moving ice.

Inukjuak, about 930 miles north of Montreal, hired an airplane to scan the region for signs of the whales, town manager Johnny Williams said.

Mark O'Connor of the regional marine wildlife board said the aerial search did not locate the orcas, but he noted that large swaths of ice-free water were seen in the area.

"So as far as I could tell, the emergency, for sure, is averted," said O'Connor, the board's director of wildlife management.

"Whether the whales have found a passage all the way to the Hudson Strait, we probably will never know."

Locals said the whales had been trapped for at least two days. A recent, sudden drop in temperature may have caught the whales off guard, leaving them cornered.