An El Nino-less summer is coming. Here's what that could mean for Canada
As Canadians brace themselves for summer temperatures, forecasters say a weakening El Nino cycle doesn’t mean relief from the heat.
A killer whale stranded on the shore of an Alaskan island near British Columbia was rescued thanks to the help of wildlife officials and the crew of a passing ship.
NOAA Fisheries, which is the U.S. federal agency responsible for marine conservation, received word of a stranded orca at around 9 a.m. on Thursday after the whale was spotted by a nearby private vessel. The whale had been stuck on a rocky beach on the east side of Prince of Wales Island, located in the Alaskan Panhandle near the B.C. coast, NOAA Fisheries spokesperson Julie Fair told CTVNews.ca in an email on Sunday.
At that time, the six-metre-long whale was approximately 1.5 metres above the tide line. High tide was expected to occur at around 5:30 p.m. The whale had also been vocalizing the whole time it was stranded, and other orcas were spotted in its vicinity.
"NOAA Fisheries marine mammal experts decided to take a wait and see approach, hoping that with the incoming tide, the killer whale would refloat and be able to leave the beach area," said Fair.
In the meantime, NOAA allowed the vessel's crew to pump seawater at the whale in order to keep the whale wet and keep the birds away until Alaska Wildlife Troopers and a NOAA officer arrived, Fair said.
The tide had started to come in at around 2 p.m. and by 3 p.m., the tide had risen high enough that the whale could refloat.
"(Our officer and troopers) say it moved a bit slowly at first and meandered around a little before swimming away," said Fair.
With the help of researchers at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the killer whale has been identified as T146D, a 13-year-old juvenile Bigg's killer whale from the "west coast transient" population.
Some observers on social media speculated that the whale may have been stranded due to the 8.2-magnitude earthquake that shook parts of Alaska on Wednesday, but Fair says there isn't any evidence that the earthquake played any part.
"The earthquake was a thousand miles away in the Aleutian Islands, and this stranding happened in Southeast Alaska," said Fair. "Live strandings of whales, including killer whales, is unusual but does happen from time to time."
As Canadians brace themselves for summer temperatures, forecasters say a weakening El Nino cycle doesn’t mean relief from the heat.
Canada Post is increasing stamp prices for the third time since 2019, a move the Crown corporation says is a "reality" of its sales-based revenue structure.
The federal New Democrats are calling out Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and his party for trying to block the bill that could pave the way for millions of Canadians to access birth control and diabetes coverage.
Defence lawyers of Jeremy Skibicki have admitted in court the accused killed four Indigenous women, but argues he is not criminally responsible for the deaths by way of mental disorder – this latest development has triggered a judge-alone trial rather than a jury trial.
A daily spoonful of olive oil could lower your risk of dying from dementia, according to a new study by Harvard scientists.
An Ontario MPP was asked again to leave the Ontario legislature on Monday for wearing a keffiyeh, a garment that was banned by the Speaker last month due to its political symbolism.
H5N1 or avian flu is decimating wildlife around the world and is now spreading among cattle in the United States, sparking concerns about 'pandemic potential' for humans. Now a health expert is urging Canada to scale up surveillance north of the border.
Democratic Institutions Minister Dominic LeBlanc will be tabling legislation on Monday aimed at countering foreign interference in Canada. Federal officials have scheduled a technical briefing on the incoming bill for Monday afternoon.
Polish prosecutors have discontinued an investigation into human skeletons found at a site where German dictator Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders spent time during the Second World War because the advanced state of decay made it impossible to determine the cause of death, a spokesman said Monday.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.