“They are free, they are gone,” Johnny Williams, the town manager, said in a telephone interview. “Last night, the winds shifted from the north. The ice cracked and with the new moon, the ice went. We have open waters on the coastline of Hudson Bay.”
He said the whales’ escape was a huge relief for Inukjuak. Over the last few days, 80 people at a time had gone out on the ice to watch the whales. “We were all trying to find out how we can save them,” he said. “We observed the wind, the moon, everything.”