Beached bowhead whales in western Nunavut might point to killer whale attacks

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Steve Ferguson, a research scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, says recently beached bowheads could have been attacked by killer whales.

A dead bowhead whale carcass is shown on a beach roughly 60 kilometres outside Kugaaruk, Nunavut in a handout photo. Rene Kukkuvak was out polar-bear hunting with his family on Thanksgiving weekend when he came across something he had never seen before.

After scanning the area in case the carcasses had attracted polar bears, the group took off only to find three more beached bowheads. Kukkuvak says the whales were "a few miles apart."Steve Ferguson, a research scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, looked at Kukkuvak's photos and said the bowheads could have been attacked by killer whales."That's a key piece of the whales that the killer whales like to eat.

Ferguson said Nunavut hunters have told him over the years that groups of four to six killer whales have been known to take down a bowhead. Killer whales have been recorded in Baffin Bay and the Davis Strait for over a century, but spotting the mammals near Kugaaruk is "pretty unusual" and points to a loss of sea ice, Ferguson said. "They're able to go further now."

But Ferguson added it's difficult to confirm whether killer whales were responsible for the bowhead deaths.One alternative is that the whales were struck by a ship, but Ferguson pointed out there isn't much ship traffic around Kugaaruk.

 

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