Fishermen thought they had stumbled upon a seal swimming on an iceberg (6 photos)

Life at sea is associated with many different and incredible events and sensations, and the close proximity to the beauty and power of Mother Nature makes it possible to see the world as almost none of us have ever seen it.

Fisheries Mallory Harrigan, Cliff Russell and Allan Russell were at sea a few miles off the Labrador Peninsula in eastern Canada when they came across a completely unusual phenomenon. On top of a small mushroom-shaped iceberg, which was slowly drifting into the open ocean, there was some kind of animal, apparently not aquatic at all. It turned out to be a hungry and deathly frightened arctic fox, completely wet and stupefied by the screams of the seagulls circling above him.

“He was probably there looking for food,” Mallory Harrigan told Bored Panda. “Cliff says the animal jumped onto the ice while hunting, and at that moment a huge ice floe broke off and began to float into the ocean.”

Knowing that the poor animal was doomed to die a terrible death from cold and starvation, Mallory and her teammates decided that they should intervene and do everything they could to try to save its life. They sailed their boat straight to the iceberg and by some miracle managed to lure the arctic fox on board.

“He tried to get away from us at first and getting him on board was not an easy task,” Mallory said. “We had to break the ice on which the arctic fox was sitting and take it with a hand landing net. He fought and tried to escape at all costs until he completely lost the ability to move.”

When the fishermen finally managed to take the animal on board, the crew members carefully built something like a bed and began to feed and care for the poor arctic fox.

“We grabbed him with a landing net and took him on board, but he immediately hid in a corner. He was too weak to do anything and slept most of the way. When we approached him, the arctic fox was a little nervous, but then, when we fed him, he calmed down completely,” they said.

“He didn't eat anything for the first 5-6 hours. We gave him chips and crackers, but he didn't touch anything until he was completely awake, and then we fed him Vienna sausages from a can.”

Once back on land, the grateful arctic fox was released back into its natural habitat. He was well rested, slept well, and his belly was full of sausages. A simple act of human kindness saved his life. Mallory says she still looks for him from time to time, unwittingly looking into the old doghouses in Williams Harbor. I would like to wish this lucky guy that there will be no more such unplanned regattas in his life.