A humpback whale trapped in ice off Newfoundland is likely doomed unless weather conditions change in the coming days. Residents noticed the whale stuck in shallow water on Friday near Old Perlican. Hemmed in by ice, the creature cannot escape. "You can see the blood on the ice where he is. I guess he's moving trying to get out," neighbor Mary Lou Riggs tells CBC News. "You can hear him crying … like a baby." A local rescue group says the ice in Cook's Cove is too thick to cut with an icebreaker and they can't euthanize the whale. "There is nothing that can be done to assist unless the wind changes and frees the ice in the cove," Whale Release and Strandings wrote on Facebook. "Please respect the animal in the situation it has found itself and do not attempt to touch the animal but just to leave it."
Photos show the animal's bloody tail poking through the icy water. “He was jammed right in there and couldn’t even move,” Riggs tells the Herald News. Checks throughout the weekend confirmed the whale is still alive, "blowing a bit," says Riggs, who adds that the heartbreaking scene is too much for her friends to bear. Local fishermen think the wind won't change for a few days, Riggs notes, a change that would allow the ice to shift so the whale can escape—if the humpback can hold out that long. State wildlife officials say the ice pack in 2014 fatally stranded nine blue whales and 40 white-beaked dolphins, per the Herald News. (Happy news for 200 stranded whales in New Zealand.)
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