Another whale of a reunion eyed off Canadian coast
Date: 14-Oct-02
Country: CANADA
Author: Allan Dowd
The whale, known to scientists as L98, has been living alone off Vancouver Island's west coast since last year, after becoming separated from a pod that normally summers in the waters of Washington state's Puget Sound.
Canadian fisheries officials said on Thursday that a panel of whale experts will decide if they should attempt to capture the young male next summer and relocate it closer to where its relatives normally are.
Scientists successfully relocated a young orphaned female orca in July. The whale, known as A73 and nicknamed Springer, was taken by boat from a busy shipping channel near Seattle to Canadian waters where she was reunited with her family pod.
Orcas rarely separate from their pods for long periods and the effort to help A73 - the first time scientist have successfully staged a family reunion for killer whales in the wild - drew international attention.
Scientists had hoped that L98, who they have nicknamed Luna, would rejoin the family pod on his own this summer, but it was unclear if the other whales ever got close enough for him to hear them.
Unlike A73, L98 has remained healthy while living alone, but scientists are worried because lonely orcas sometime turn to boaters for attention and social interaction, putting both themselves and the humans in danger.
Fisheries officers began patrolling the area near Nootka Sound where L98 has been living after receiving reports that boaters had been interacting with the whale - in at least one case going so far as to pat the animal on the head.
A statement by Fisheries and Oceans Canada on Thursday said there is "considerable public interest" in relocating L98 before his pod returns to deeper water in the Pacific Ocean. But the department added that scientists do not want to move too quickly.
Experts are concerned that if the reunion is unsuccessful, the whale will be forced to spend the winter in waters with less food and more danger from humans than he now faces.
"DFO wants what is best for the whale and its pod," spokeswoman Marilyn Joyce said in a statement.
The Canadian efforts to help killer whales have been compared to the so far unsuccessful effort to return the killer whale Keiko to a life in the wild after living most of its life in captivity.
People-loving Keiko showed up in a narrow fjord in western Norway in early September, six weeks after he was freed from a pen in Iceland where trainers had spent three years and $20 million to make him fit for the oceans again.
