In the middle of the thick ice, a few black spots move in a video broadcast by the Japanese television channel NHK.
Around ten orcas were spotted by a fisherman this Tuesday morning off the coast of Rausu, Japan, trapped by drifting ice.
Seiichiro Tsuchiya, a marine life researcher, explained that
he "counted 13 mammals, including three or four children, in the ice hole"
, adding that they
"appeared to be in great difficulty breathing"
.
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The city said it was unable to carry out a boat rescue mission near the hole located 1 km off the coast of the Shiretoko peninsula, a UNESCO world heritage site.
“We have no choice but to wait for the ice to break so they can escape,”
said a Rausu official.
Around 4 p.m. (8 a.m. in Paris), a private company, according to NHK, observed the group, now made up of 17 killer whales, about two kilometers northeast of where they had been spotted in the morning.
Also read: Humpback whales, orcas, belugas: where to swim with the rarest of ocean giants?
Orcas, unlike larger cetaceans, cannot spend long minutes underwater, and need to come to the surface after a few moments.
This is not a first for the city located on the island of Hokkaido, the northernmost of the island country and used to being covered in ice in winter: in 2005, orcas had already been trapped by the ice and were deceased.