A young killer whale that was trapped for more than a month in a lagoon on Vancouver Island swam past a bottleneck at high tide early Friday, reaching an inlet that could take it to the open sea, officials said. The Ehattesaht and Nuchatlaht First Nations said in a statement that a team monitoring the 2-year-old calf saw it swim past the area where its mother had died, pass under a bridge and head down the inlet “all on her own.” The young orca still must leave the Little Espinosa Inlet to reach open ocean.
An orphaned killer whale calf that had been trapped for weeks in a tidal lagoon on Vancouver island on Friday swam out on her own, a local Indigenous tribe said.