A baby whale trapped for more than a month in a lagoon on Vancouver Island overcame a bottleneck by swimming at high tide early Friday and reaching an inlet that could take it into the open sea, officials said.
A team monitoring the 2-year-old calf saw her swim near the area where her mother died, get under the bridge and head toward the cove “completely alone,” the Ehattesaht and Nuchatlaht tribes said in a statement.
Young killer whales still have to leave Little Espinosa Inlet to reach the open sea.
The calf had been trapped in a tidal lagoon near the town of Zeballos, British Columbia, since March 23, when its mother became trapped at low tide and died on a rocky beach.
“Today, the Zeballos community and people around the world are waking up to amazing news and what can only be described as pride in the strength demonstrated by this tiny killer whale,” President Simon John said in a statement.
John said authorities and First Nations members are taking precautions to ensure the killer whale does not come into contact with people or boats.
“We must give him every possible opportunity to return to his family with as little human interaction as possible,” he declared.
In mid-April, an attempt was made to free the cetaceans using a net to trap them. The killer whale managed to evade a 50-person rescue team using boats, divers and advanced underwater detection equipment.
In another attempt, a woman tried to get a killer whale out of the lake by playing the violin during high tide.
