(Reuters) – A group of Russian rescuers and volunteers were trying to save four killer whales stranded off the Kamchatka Peninsula on Wednesday, dousing them with water and trying to push them into deeper waters, the emergency ministry said.
With a tide due soon, more than 30 rescuers were on site, aiding two orcas and two calves, the emergency ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.
The whales got stuck in a silted estuary making it impossible to use equipment to reach them.
“We are waiting for the waters to come,” TASS state news agency cited the region’s emergency minister, Sergei Lebedev, as saying. “The only way to help the animals now is to water them manually.”
The Kamchatka Peninsula is a 1,250-kilometre-long (777 miles) peninsula in the Russian Far East, some 6,500 kilometres east of Moscow.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
