11 killer whales free after being 'locked' in ice, mayor says Eleven orcas, including one that appeared to be nursing, were trapped in the ice in Quebec, Canada. Eleven killer whales that were "locked in" by ice in a Canadian bay, with only a small area of open water for them to surface, are now apparently free, possibly due to a change in current that helped break open a path to the sea, the mayor of a nearby village said Thursday. Two scouts sent to check on the killer whales around 8 a.m. local time found a passage of water had been created in Hudson Bay all of the way to the open sea - nearly 25 miles away -- and the ice hole that the animals had been trapped in was empty, said Petah Inukpuk, mayor of Inukjuak, an Inuit village home to 1,800, in Quebec. They are free. They are no longer here. When there is a new moon, the water current is activated. It could have helped ... completely trap them, but in this case it caused an open passage out to the open water," he told NBC News, adding that they probably freed themselves overnight. It was mother nature that helped them. ... They are no longer icelocked. A hunter had found the killer whales, also known as orcas, on Wednesday morning in the bay in northeastern Canada. Two of the orcas appeared to be adults; the remaining nine were smaller in size, said Inukpuk. A video taken by villager Clement Rousseau showed the opening to be just large enough for a few of the orcas to surface at a time. A team from Canada's fisheries department had been expected to arrive at the ice hole on Thursday, according to Canada's CBC.ca. "They are in a confined area," Inukpuk told NBC News on Wednesday, noting then that there was "no more open water." The villagers held a public meeting Wednesday night and crafted a plan similar to a rescue performed in 1988 of two California gray whales that got stuck in ice in Alaska. In Operation Breakthrough, which made international headlines, Eskimo whalers cut more than a half mile of holes for the whales to travel through on their way to open sea in Alaska. Two Soviet icebreakers helped by crushing a critical thick wall of ice that blocked their path and freed the animals after 20 days, according to a story on the rescue by the Los Angeles Times. Twenty of the Inukjuak villagers were tasked with doing much the same: they were going to remove the broken ice around the area and use chainsaws to enlargen the ice hole, which was getting increasingly smaller. A neighboring Inuit village had also offered a large chainsaw capable of cutting the ice. The villagers even got offers of help from far afield, including Germany and England. We were prepared to endure it, make their breathing hole bigger and create another breathing hole nearby. Enlarge it, going step by step," he said. We were prepared to do that method because the closest icebreaker was ten days away ... without assistance they would not have made it. Photoblog: Images of whales that were stuck in ice A Canadian fisheries official told CBC.ca that some icebreakers were being used in the Saint Lawrence River, where three commercial ships got stuck this week. There have been reports of other whales getting stuck beneath the ice, but it was an anomaly for killer whales - technically in the oceanic dolphin family - which tend to hunt around the ice, said Deborah Giles, a graduate student researcher at the University of California, Davis, who has studied killer whales for eight years. However, one pod of orcas died in 2005 in the Japanese Arctic after an ice hole closed, according to CBC.ca. There have been some other cases, too, said Paul Wade, a research fisheries biologist at NOAA's National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle. Wade said he watched videos of the killer whales online and thought some were engaging in normal behavior while others appeared agitated. He said it looked like the pod includes two adult males, several juveniles and female adults or younger adult males. The group was most likely related, said Giles. But this was the first time that they were "locked in," he said. The winter was unusual this year in that the bay did not freeze up as it normally does at the end of November or beginning of December. There was open water after Christmas but earlier this week it got "really cold," leaving just an area the size of a swimming pool that was getting smaller, Inukpuk said. "People here were very much ready to help and it is surprising because the killer whales are (our) competitors for the same species," such as seals, he said. We were ready to give aid to make sure that they survived until help could come. He said they were "very pleased" with the outcome and he had a wish for the group: "I hope they find a good meal and they have a hearty feast because they are probably pretty hungry." Eleven killer whales were trapped for days under thick arctic ice in a remote corner of Quebec, taking turns to breathe through a tiny hole.