Islanders help rescue orca stranded on Orkney beachon January 6, 2021 at 12:23 pm

A young orca has been rescued after becoming stranded on a beach in Orkney.

The 3.4m (11ft) long animal, thought to be a male, was spotted at Bay of Newark on Sanday on Monday.

Volunteers from the British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) charity and local residents spent more than an hour helping the orca.

They managed to get it into a position where it could breathe properly and eventually swim out into open water once the tide had come in.

BMLR said strandings of orca were “incredibly rare” and it believed the Sanday incident was the first successful rescue of an orca by its volunteers.

The charity said it would monitor the island’s beaches for the next few days to make sure the whale did not strand again.

A special stretcher for rescuing dolphins was used to keep the orca upright and not lying on its side.

The charity said: “After about an hour and with help from local residents to stabilise the animal, it suddenly took matters into its own fins and made a move to swim off.

“Unable to hold the animal any longer, the stretcher was lowered and the orca swam forward straight out towards the open sea.”

Orca can be seen around Scotland’s north and west coasts.

Animals from a pod known as the 27s were seen hunting seals off Sunday at Christmas, but the orca rescued on Monday is not from any of the pods seen around Orkney and Shetland.

Orkney Marine Mammal Research Initiative has been liaising with experts, including in Norway, to try and identify the young animal.