March 25, 2024
As the community mourns a mother killer whale that died after getting stranded on shore Saturday, an effort is underway to reunite her orphaned calf with its pod.
The two whales somehow ended up in the Zeballos Causeway—where the tides are known to change quickly—on northwest Vancouver Island early Saturday morning. The mother was found with a dead seal in her mouth, so the working theory is she was in the area to teach her baby how to hunt.
Resident Stan Price says he was the first to spot the adult orca at daybreak when he was on his way to work. “I watched it for a bit wondering if it was alive or not, and then I could see it was breathing,” he recalled.
Price then radioed Glenn McCall, who owns a local road maintenance company, and he in turn called the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and rallied residents from Zeballos and the Ehattesaht and Nuchatlaht First Nations.