‘Being so helpless is hard to describe’: can rescuers win the race against time to save an orphaned orca?

Experts are trying everything from drums to whale calls to lure kiisaiis - or Brave Little Hunter - out of the Canadian lagoon she has been trapped in since the stranding death of her mother

As a two-year-old orca calf circled a lagoon off the west coast of Canada on Monday, she heard a comforting sound resonating through the unfamiliar place in which she found herself: the clicks and chirps of her great-aunt.

But the calf, named kiisaiis (pronounced kwee-sahay-is, which roughly translates as Brave Little Hunter) by local First Nations people, could not locate another whale in the shallow waters. The calls, broadcast from speakers placed underwater, were part of a complex and desperate operation still under way to try to save the stranded calf.