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| Beluga or white whales live in Arctic and sub-Arctic waters |
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More than
100 Beluga whales are trapped in ice floes in Russia's far north-east Chukotka
region.
Local
authorities have urged Moscow to send an icebreaker to free them.
The whales
are unable to swim to clear water because of huge volumes of ice in a channel
in the Bering Sea, a Chukotka region statement on its website said.
A lack of
food in the small area where they are trapped, plus the advancing ice, means
the animals are threatened with exhaustion and death, it said.
Local
hunters reported the plight of the animals trapped in the Sinyavinsky channel,
near the village of Yanrakynot, to the authorities.
Chukotka
Governor Roman Kopin has written to Russia's transport and emergencies
ministers asking them to send an icebreaker to the channel to release the
trapped whales.
The region
says it is trying to do a survey to find the distance from the whales' location
to open water, but is being hampered by poor visibility.
Beluga
whales are also known as white whales and live in Arctic and sub-Arctic waters.
They are
listed as "near-threatened" on the International Union for
Conservation of Nature's red list.
Russian
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is a fan of the Beluga whale, and heads Russia's
programme to protect the mammal. In 2009 on a visit to the Sea of Okhotsk he
donned a wetsuit to attach a transmitter to a Beluga named Dasha.
Related Article:
 |
Russian diver Natalia Avseenko, 36, stripped naked to swim with two
beluga whales in sub-zero water in the Arctic. (Photo: voc.com.cn) |
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