A family on vacation in Canada’s St. Lawrence River had an unexpected encounter with a baby beluga whale who had lost her mother. The calf was likely born just hours earlier and was in desperate need of help.
Luckily, the family’s three boys stumbled upon her and quickly took action to save her life. They dug a hole to accumulate water to hydrate her skin and provided her with buckets of water every five minutes.
Researchers from the Group for Research and Education on Marine Mammals (GREMM) arrived to carefully move the ailing baby back into the waters near another pod of beluga whales. Their hope was that one of the females would be induced to feed her, but recent reports suggest that has not yet happened.
Beluga whales nurse their young for around two years, and this baby is just days old and desperately in need of a lactating mother to give her a vital start in life. The calf’s survival is particularly important as the beluga whale population in the St. Lawrence region is at an unprecedented low.
The area once boasted thousands of beluga whales, but today, the population is estimated to be less than 900. According to the World Wildlife Fund of Canada, much of this decline is due to the river’s rising pollution levels.
However, this baby beluga has a fighting chance thanks to the heroic efforts of the family who found her. She held out on the beach for her young heroes and is now holding out for a mother to take her under her wing. For now, the outcome of her story remains uncertain, but the hope remains that she will find the love and care she needs to survive and thrive.
An orphaned juvenile Beluga whale washed up on the beach of Canada just a few hours ago.
Nicholas Milliard, 15, explained, “We excavated a hole so that water would gather and its skin would be hydrated.”
The Canadian family kept pouring water on the baby whale every 5 minutes until the rescue group arrived.
In the hopes of locating a nursing whale, the newborn whale was returned to the ocean and exposed to various pods of Beluga whales.
