Maybe that couple was really just trying to sell a good duck, and the reporter got mixed up?

Although in all seriousness, as the Eskimo languages appear (to my English-speaking ears, anyway) to have only two or three different vowels, as well as differences in their consonant sounds from those in English, and have no standardized transliterations of most words into English, the word for this food (commonly written as "agutaq") can just as legitimately be spelled in any number of different ways in English.