Product of Newfoundland is a blog all about Newfoundland & Labrador, a province in Canada. Last week, Robert Hiscock wrote about the true story of the Christmas whales who stayed in the province while their friends swam south in 1978. However, they got stuck and needed help:
Filed under: animals Canada Christmas ice marine biology oceans water whalesWhales, like people, need air. So it’s dangerous for them to swim under an ice sheet — there may be nowhere to surface and breathe; they might drown.
When people first spotted the whales, they were crowded into an acre-sized patch of open water. It wasn’t open by chance — it stayed because of the whales. As they surfaced to breathe, they’d break any newly-formed, thin ice. They were fighting against Mother Nature and, eventually, they would lose.
Word of the trapped whales spread quickly.