Usually when sealing on a crab-fishing boat, there are a lot of surprising things to spot. Mallory Harrigan and her crew were fishing crabs in the Atlantic Ocean’s waters off the Labrador coast, Canada, when they spotted something unusual. Around 3-4 miles away from their boat they noticed something moving on a mushroom-shaped iceberg.
The crew initially thought that might be a baby seal, but they eventually decided to have a closer look. It turned out it’s wasn’t a marine creature, but an Artic fox instead; one that looked to be in real trouble. “We initially thought it was a baby seal,” Mallory told THE DODO.
Without a second thought Mallory and the rest of the crew rescue the poor little thing. “We were able to get him aboard even though he fought it,” she said. “We knew we were his only chance for survival, as the winds had changed and were driving all the ice farther out to sea.” It didn’t took too long until they managed to get the helpless animal into their boat and now they were heading to the land to release the fox back in the wild.
Most likely, the Artic fox was searching for food on the ice when that eventually broke off the mainland and it ended up stranded in the middle of the ocean. Fortunately for it, these king-hearted fishermen saved its life.
“He probably only had another day or so on the ice floe, or it would have foundered,” crew member Alan Russell told CBC’s Labrador Morning. “And the way that the wind was, the ice was probably never going to go back into land. He’s a pretty lucky guy.”
Before returning back to the land, the fishermen offered some food to the starving fox. They even build a bed for it in order to get some rest as he looked really exhausted. Once the boat reached the shores, the fox was released into his natural habitat. “We dropped him off in an old doghouse,” Mallory said. “He shook himself off and that was it!”
