![]() "We did everything we could to avoid that outcome."At fisheries offices in Vancouver, British Columbia, "A lot of people here are pretty shocked and saddened," Sloan said."It was one of our fears about what might happen to Luna," Ford said. "There were blood and remains in the wake of the tug."A spokesman for the tugboat company, Great Northern Marine Towing Ltd., of New Westminster, British Columbia, said the captain and crew of the vessel General Jackson were heartbroken about the accident."We're all very sad about it," Barry Connerty told CP. It would have been a sudden death," Ford said."The impact was felt by people on the tug," Ford told Canadian Press. He must have gotten drawn into the propeller," said government research scientist and orca expert John Ford in Victoria, at the south end of Vancouver Island.The tug's big propeller, contained in a cylinder, "generates a lot of current. Luna, known to enjoy playing in boat wakes, "was swimming under the vessel and was hit by a propeller," Sloan said Friday."It was a really big tugboat - 104 feet," she said.The vessel was idling when Luna approached."Luna came over as he does and was interacting - disappearing under the hull and so on. ![]() They live and hunt in family groups and mostly eat fish, especially salmon,The 1,700-horsepower seagoing tug had pulled into sheltered waters near Conception Point to escape rough weather in the Pacific. ![]() ![]() Luna, the juvenile killer whale from Washington state waters who got lost in Canada's Nootka Sound five years ago, apparently died when he was accidentally struck by a tugboat propeller, Canadian authorities said.Luna, known to scientists as L-98 and a member of one of Washington's three resident orca pods, or family groups, wandered into Nootka Sound on the west side of Vancouver Island in 2001 and stayed, worrying activists and annoying boaters and seaplane pilots with his friendly curiosity."We don't know 100 percent but we do believe it's Luna," said spokeswoman Lara Sloan with Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans.Transient killer whales, which range along the coast preying on seals and other marine mammals, occasionally come through the long, twisty sound, but tend to avoid human traffic.The dangerously friendly Luna was part of the region's "resident population," which spends much of the year in U.S. From a Washington State KOMO news report: ![]()
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