TORONTO -- A killer whale stranded on the shore of an Alaskan island near British Columbia was rescued thanks to the help of wildlife officials and the crew of a passing ship.
NOAA Fisheries, which is the U.S. federal agency responsible for marine conservation, received word of a stranded orca at around 9 a.m. on Thursday after the whale was spotted by a nearby private vessel. The whale had been stuck on a rocky beach on the east side of Prince of Wales Island, located in the Alaskan Panhandle near the B.C. coast, NOAA Fisheries spokesperson Julie Fair told CTVNews.ca in an email on Sunday.
Sign up here to receive The Climate Barometer, delivering climate and environmental news to your inbox every week In the meantime, NOAA allowed the vessel's crew to pump seawater at the whale in order to keep the whale wet and keep the birds away until Alaska Wildlife Troopers and a NOAA officer arrived, Fair said.
Some observers on social media speculated that the whale may have been stranded due to the 8.2-magnitude earthquake that shook parts of Alaska on Wednesday, but Fair says there isn't any evidence that the earthquake played any part.
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