A wave for Wellington

A pod of killer whales cruising around Wellington Harbour brought crowds of spectators to the city's shorelines.


The pod of up to 12 orcas, including juveniles, females and several large males, spent much of yesterday inside the harbour before heading for the seal colony at Red Rocks in the hope of a late lunch.

They were first spotted around Matiu/Somes Island in the morning and moved majestically past Breaker Bay and Lyall Bay, reaching Island Bay about 2.30pm.

Onlookers saw them jump from the water, surf along the breakers and venture within a few metres of the shore.

Rebecca Rose and husband Matt Chamberlain spotted the pod in Lyall Bay and raced to collect children Will, 9, Tom, 7, and Lucy, 4, from school and preschool.

Ms Rose said she had never seen them run so fast when they learned there were killer whales to be seen.

But when they got to the bay and were told the whales had gone, "the kids' faces just dropped and they started to cry".

The family drove off-road to Red Rocks, getting there just in time to see the pod arrive.

"It made their day. Three of the pod came in surfing straight into the beach. They were just planing through the water."

Tiger of the sea

Just when you thought it was safe to go back near the water.

The Times-Standard got a tip last week that people had seen an orca beach itself and grab a seal, mimicking a hunt more typically seen in Patagonia or the Crozet Islands in the Indian Ocean. It was an amazing tale, and one I found had quite a few witnesses to back it up.

Not surprisingly, I suppose, when the experts all said “may be the first ever” in the United States, people came out of the woodwork to offer up similar sightings. Not all stories were quite as dramatic. One guy called to say orcas hit seals and sea lions on the beach along the Klamath River “all the time.” A surfer wrote in to say that in 2000, he'd seen a killer whale chase a sea lion into shallow water -- just moments after they'd hauled their surfboards from the waves.

Another man wrote in remembering a story from May of 1985. He was at a bar watching the Celtics play the Lakers in the championship, and talking about a news report about a killer whale sighting. Apparently a group of school kids on a field trip to a beach just south of the Russian River watched with gaping mouths as a killer whale blasted onto the beach to snag a sea lion, tearing it to shreds in front of the class.

If any of these stories are real -- and at least most of them are -- then the potential “first ever” on the recent Trinidad spectacle is not applicable. (By the way, several inquiries were made about what happened to the seal. No one I talked to knows.)
Still, such a sighting is exceedingly rare at best. I had to wonder if a beachcomber had ever found himself suddenly half-swallowed by an orca with, perhaps, bad eyesight or an ear infection. But it turns out there have been no documented attacks of wild killer whales on humans. None documented, that is. The closest I could find was a young boy in Alaska splashing in the surf being bumped by an orca. Of course, if that whale wanted to eat that kid, it would have.

The orca is the tiger of the sea. The animal is beautiful, intelligent, vicious and incredibly strong. They form tight family bonds. They have specific tastes in prey. They learn and are innovative.

It's this last trait that holds hope that some of us might get to see such an incredible phenomenon again. It's not just a freak deal. The Trinidad orca's kids were watching, learning, almost certainly. It may be a year, or 10 years, or 20, but someday one of those kids may heave itself on shore and perform its brutal deed, and someone may get to see it.

This time, I hope someone has a camera ready.

After the Orca Gold Rush

When we finally counted killer whales, we learned we'd almost wiped them out.

To determine how many killer whales were on the coast, the Fisheries Research Board of Canada in 1971 launched a study in collaboration with the relevant departments of the four Pacific American states. In B.C., the researcher chosen to head the study was Dr. Mike Bigg, a marine mammalogist attached to the Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo. The project he began in 1971 would last the rest of his life and completely transform thinking about the animals, particularly about how abundant they were and how they organized themselves sociallyBigg was eight years old when his parents emigrated from England to Canada in 1947. His father Andy found work in the cement plant at Bamberton, north of Victoria, and moved his family into a tiny house on the Malahat Highway. Andy, who had worked on newspapers back in England, began supplementing his income by writing articles for tourist publications and eventually became a well-known journalist on Vancouver Island.

By that time, Mike had left home to attend university. After completing graduate work in zoology at the University of British Columbia, he joined the federal Department of Fisheries as the head of marine mammal research on the West Coast. Initially his work involved seals and sea lions, and he was also involved in the successful relocation of sea otters from Alaska back to the B.C. coast, where they had once been abundant. But the killer whale project became a passion, not a job.

The challenge facing Bigg and his associates was how to count animals that spend 95 per cent of their lives below the surface of the water and are constantly on the move. An individual that is counted today in one location can easily be the same individual that is counted tomorrow many kilometers away. At the suggestion of Murray Newman, Bigg organized a one-day census, the first animal census of its kind anywhere in the world. He enlisted the help of volunteer informants up and down the coast: lighthouse keepers, commercial fishermen, tugboat operators, ferry crews, pleasure-boat owners, mariners of all types, anyone who was likely to see a killer whale in the course of their daily lives. He distributed thousands of questionnaires for these volunteer spotters to record how many whales they saw, where and when.

The census-day shock

Monday, July 26, 1971, was census day. Spotting whales with the naked eye is not easy, especially in rough water, and records indicated that that date gave the best chance of good weather. Close to five hundred forms came back, a large enough response that the census was repeated in 1972 and 1973. The results led Bigg to a shocking conclusion. He estimated that the population of killer whales along the coast of B.C. and Washington State was only between 200 and 350 animals, far fewer than had been supposed.

One thing Bigg and his researchers learned from the initial census was that whales seemed to be particularly numerous in Johnstone Strait, the long, windblown passage that runs along the northeast side of Vancouver Island. In August 1972, Bigg and Ian McAskie, an associate from the biological station, visited Johnstone Strait on a fisheries department boat to observe and photograph killer whales in the wild. The two researchers noticed that they could recognize some individual animals by marks on their dorsal fins and backs. An animal called Nicola, for example, had a large nick in her fin, while the fin of another, known as Stubbs, had been nearly amputated, leaving only a mangled stub. Wavy had a rippling fin, Top Notch had a notched fin and so on. As they observed the animals, an idea dawned.

As McAskie recalled it: "Mike and I were up there [in 1972] just to check the numbers and we thought, just go up and count them. We didn't know what to do about that. I noticed that one had had its dorsal fin sheared off about two-thirds of the way up. A great chunk. And we called it Stubbs. I didn't think too much about it until further up the strait in a different place and a different time we saw it again. We wondered then, discussing it on the bridge, if we should look for other indications of injuries. Seemed like a good idea. This meant chasing individuals to take photographs. Stubbs was obvious, but once you started looking you could see smaller injuries."

The use of physical markings to identify individual animals was not new. Bristol Foster, then the director of the Royal B.C. Museum, had done work identifying giraffes in Africa by noting the pattern of their skin patches. Roger Payne was beginning to use photographs to identify right whales off Argentina, and Steven Katona was doing the same with humpback whales in the North Atlantic.

The technique of photo identification was in the air; Bigg and his team utilized it to make a breakthrough in the study of killer whales. As they made more field trips and gathered more photographs, they were able to show that not just some but all of the whales could be identified using this technique. And once they identified individual animals, everything changed. The whales no longer resembled a cloud of bees buzzing around a hive or a row of blackbirds on a wire, indistinguishable one from another. Instead they were individuals, each with its own physical appearance, its own family, its own life history and habits. And each individual could be followed and documented.

The study expanded over the next few years. Censuses continued to be carried out, but Bigg also took a more proactive approach. John Ford, one of Bigg's associates, described how the system evolved. "He established a network of hundreds of volunteer observers, who would telephone or call by radio whenever whales were seen in the area. When a call was received, Mike or one of his field teams would race to the location to intercept, observe and photograph the whales. Occasionally, Mike would locate a pod from a float plane, land near the whales and, with his charm and infectious enthusiasm, convince a nearby boater to take him closer to the animals for photographs. In only three years, the team collected data from more than three hundred encounters with killer whale pods. By 1976 they had identified virtually every individual on the coast and had shed the first scientific light on the natural history of these remarkable cetaceans."

A key member of the research team was Graeme Ellis. Ellis had left his job at Sealand, tired of the circus atmosphere there, gone blue water sailing for a year, then taken a year of university. He was at loose ends when a group of filmmakers asked him to be part of an expedition to Johnstone Strait in the summer of 1973 to film killer whales. Camping in the strait, Ellis and a photographer, James Hunter, used a rubber Zodiac to track the whales, and it was during that summer that Ellis met Bigg. They spent time chatting on one of the research boats and Bigg invited Ellis to drop in to the biological station during the winter. One thing led to another and Ellis began working with Bigg whenever a few dollars could be found to pay him, and often when it couldn't. He was ready with his camera on a moment's notice, whenever a call came in on the "killer whale hotline," to jump in a boat and tear off in to the strait to locate and follow the animals.

Sanctuary and 'seal bombs'

Meanwhile, in Puget Sound, the U.S. government hired marine biologist Kenneth Balcomb in 1976 to carry out a census of whales in Washington State similar to the one Bigg and his team had conducted in B.C. Balcomb's project produced a detailed snapshot of the southern whale population. When his government support ended, Balcomb went on to establish the Center for Whale Research on San Juan Island to continue the research.

The official killer whale study carried on by Bigg and his team also ended in 1976 because the main question that had prompted it -- how to set a limit on live capture of the animals -- had been answered.

In early March of that year, Sea World's Don Goldsberry, who had become the most active supplier of whales to aquariums, cornered a group of six animals at the head of Puget Sound within sight of the state capital, Olympia. His timing and tactics could not have been worse. Goldsberry was using aircraft and seal bombs to herd the whales at the same time as legislators were debating the creation of a whale sanctuary. Public opinion was already turning against killer whale capture.

The sight of the whales being harassed and "bombed" sparked an instant protest at the capture site where a crowd of more than a thousand people demanded that the captives be set free. "It was the last capture to take place in Washington State," recalled Graeme Ellis, who was at the protest, "before they put the lid on any more captures due to public protest and so on. It really was a gong show. Those guys did a real 'ride 'em cowboy' roundup right in front of Olympia, the state legislature. Everyone was horrified. They had float planes and speed boats and all the usual cowboy stuff going on."

The governor of Washington sued Goldsberry for allegedly violating his collecting agreement and ultimately a judge ordered the whales released and revoked Sea World's permit. As Ellis said, it was effectively the end of live capture on the Pacific coast. From this point, killer whales could be captured there only to replace a captive that had died or escaped. Since Bigg's censuses had already shown that the population of killer whales was too small to sustain live captures at the rate at which they had been going on, there seemed to the Canadian Department of Fisheries no more need to continue the research project.

But to Bigg and his associates, the work had just begun. Year after year they continued to monitor the whales, often in their spare time and with little or no financial support. Bigg himself was told by his bosses in the department of fisheries to shift his attention to harbour seals. He began leading a sort of double life, officially studying seals and later sea lions, while clandestinely spending much of his time compiling data on killer whales. Every scientist in the world who was interested in the whales knew about Bigg's research, but his boss on the other side of the building had little more than an inkling.

Once Bigg's team was able to identify individual whales, they could draw conclusions about the animals' social organization and behaviour patterns. The more they found out, the more it became clear just what a remarkable and unique creature the killer whale is. Thanks to Bigg's team, scientists recognized that there are actually two types of whales, residents and transients, who may share the same territory but are otherwise so different as to be almost distinct species; and that the mother is the focal individual of the pod and offspring associate with her for as long as she is alive. These phenomena do not occur in any other vertebrate animal. Much of what is now known about killer whales was discovered after Bigg died of cancer, tragically young at the age of 51, in October 1990. But all that is known derives from his pioneering work, without which it would have been impossible to identify Springer, the lost whale in Puget Sound, or develop a plan to bring her home.

The Miracle ordeal

If the live capture of killer whales for display in zoos and aquariums effectively ended on the Pacific coast in 1976, the occasional rescue of a sick or injured animal still took place. One of these rescues occurred in 1977, and it foreshadowed the rescue of Springer that took place 25 years later.

Mike Bigg and Graeme Ellis first heard about the whale that would become known as Miracle on July 4. The crew of a freighter in Nanaimo Harbour reported an animal swimming close to the ship and vocalizing actively. Since it is so unusual for a killer whale to be alone, Bigg and Ellis expected it was a false alarm, but when Ellis went out in his boat he confirmed that it was a young calf, probably just over a year old.

Reports came in during the following days and weeks as the whale was tracked northward until it entered Menzies Bay, a few kilometers north of the community of Campbell River, where it was discovered by a couple of sport fishermen. By this time, the calf appeared to be dying. It was cut where it had been struck by a propeller, a brown slime coated its back, white fungal patches were growing on its fins, and it was moving very sluggishly. There was also a bullet wound from a .22 rifle. Local people fed the whale herring and tried to protect it from the boaters who began gathering to gawk at it.

Eventually Bigg was informed and he flew up from Nanaimo with Bob Wright of Sealand and Jay Hyman, who was visiting from the New York Aquarium, where he was the consulting veterinarian. When they inspected the whale the trio of experts had no doubt the animal was dying. After burning up the phone lines to Ottawa, Wright and Bigg persuaded Fisheries Minister Romeo LeBlanc to issue a capture permit so the whale could be confined and treated for its wounds and infections.

Wright brought a crew up to Menzies Bay and with the help of a log crane they loaded the calf onto a flatbed truck and drove it through the night down island to Victoria. Not knowing for sure what infections the whale harboured, Wright did not want it sharing a pen with the other animals at Sealand, so he arranged with the Oak Bay Beach Hotel to put Miracle in the hotel's saltwater swimming pool.

The shock of the whole experience almost killed the calf. Four times she stopped breathing and sank to the bottom of the pool, and four times the rescue team was able to revive her. After a couple of days she began eating and the infection began to abate. As she recovered, Miracle received blanket coverage from the media. The Vancouver Sun kept daily track of her progress. Radio stations gave hourly updates. Thousands of curious spectators came to the hotel every day to get a look into the swimming pool. Just as Springer would, Miracle seemed to captivate the public. Medical treatment continued, and it was not until the end of February 1978, almost seven months after Miracle checked into the hotel, that she was airlifted by helicopter to Sealand.

But the animal's ordeal was far from over. No sooner had she arrived at her new home than she began convulsing, then seemed to withdraw into herself, refusing food and attention. During her time in Menzies Bay, the person who had discovered her, local millworker Bill Davis, had grown close to Miracle, hand-feeding her and eventually stroking her skin. The people at Sealand decided that exposing Miracle to a trusted friend might help her adjust to her new surroundings. Davis came down to Victoria and almost immediately got Miracle to respond and begin eating. The worst was over. Miracle lived at Sealand for almost four years until mid-January1982, when she became tangled in a net that formed one side of her pool and drowned.29 It has never been determined who her family might have been or how she came to be wounded and alone in Menzies Bay. Miracle remains a mystery.

B.C.'s last captive whales

As the 1970s drew to a close, it was evident that the era of live capture had done serious damage to the killer whale population of the Pacific coast. About fifty animals had been taken, mainly from the southern resident population, which by 1976 had been reduced to sixty-eight whales. Most of these were adults because collectors had favoured removing the younger animals. If live capture had not ceased when it did, this population of whales probably would have been wiped out. After 1976, the number of animals began to increase until by 1990 there were about ninety southern residents. Was this enough to ensure the long-term survival of the population? No one knew for sure.

Ironically, it was also during the live capture era, and perhaps because of it, that the killer whale underwent an image makeover. As the aquarium-going public grew familiar with them, the whales lost much of their fearsome reputation and became instead the poster animal for the marine mammal world: handsome, intelligent, graceful, sociable, even cuddly, if a five-tonne predator with a mouth full of sharp teeth could ever be considered cuddly.

The attitude toward the animals changed so completely that for some members of the public and the scientific community, it became anathema to keep them in captivity. In 1964, when the Vancouver Aquarium set out to obtain a killer whale, no one gave a second thought to harpooning one. Sixteen years later, in 1980, when Skana died at the Aquarium and Murray Newman wanted to obtain two new whales, he had to travel all the way to Iceland because it was no longer acceptable to capture them locally.

And even then the relocation of the animals was fought in the courts by environmentalists. Despite the public popularity of the new residents, Finna and Bjossa, captivity continued to be a hot-button issue. Finally, in 1996 the Vancouver Aquarium adopted a policy that precluded the collection of killer whales from the wild. Finna, who died in 1997, and Bjossa, who was moved to Sea World in San Diego in 2001, were the last killer whales to live at the facility.

But that was far from the end of the Aquarium's involvement with killer whales. Scientists based there continued to carry out groundbreaking field studies on the animals. It was not surprising, therefore, that when Springer showed up in Puget Sound alone and ailing, it was the Vancouver Aquarium that developed the plan to save her.

Washington scientists in search of orca poop

Resident orcas are returning to Puget Sound and some scientists are hot on their trail.

They're looking for whale feces, which provide clues to their health.

"We are looking for killer whale poop," said Katherine Ayers, University of Washington grad student.

To do that, she perches on the bow of the research vessel, net in hand. Each poop scoop she gathers provides clues into the animals' favorite foods and their hormone levels.
Hormones provide critical information.

"We're looking at stress levels, we're looking at nutrition, we're also looking at reproductive condition like pregnancy," she said.

Reproduction is the key to the survival of the endangered resident orcas. When J pod returned this spring, researchers were sad to see its newest member was missing.

"We had that new one last fall, October, but that one didn't survive the winter, so we're still at 25 in J pod," said Ken Balcomb, executive director for the Center for Whale Research.

Scientists think they may be able to reduce such unfortunate losses by identifying what stresses out the orcas and how to avoid it.

So they cruise for poop.

"When they surface, and go back down, they make these calm spots in the water and our boat checks those spots and sometimes there's a fecal sample there and sometimes there's not and it's actually easier than you'd think," Ayers said.

Researchers are concerned that low returns of salmon, the orcas' primary food, may lead to shorter stays by the resident pods.

Killer whale rides wave onto beach north of Eureka, munches on harbor seal

dozen or more people reported witnessing one of the world's rarest wildlife phenomena when an orca rode a wave onto Indian Beach in Trinidad and seized a seal.
Researchers said it may be the first recorded occurrence of its kind in the United States, although similar behavior has been witnessed in British Columbia, Argentina and islands in the Indian Ocean.

Ruby Rollings from the Seascape Pier was alerted to the presence of the killer whales in Trinidad Bay just before lunch Tuesday, and grabbed a pair of binoculars to watch. A large adult orca was swimming in the bay with a juvenile orca and two much smaller orcas, she said.

After a while, Rollings said she say the larger whale ride a wave partway onto the beach and seize a harbor seal in its teeth.

"He bit it, then he slammed the seal against the sand," Rollings said.

Rollings said the whale left the seal on the beach, then headed back into the bay, and eventually out to sea.

Such behavior is rare among orcas. Washington-based Orca Network Director Howard Garrett was surprised to hear of the sighting and said the research community is very interested.

"That's pretty amazing," Garrett said.

Several other experts the Times-Standard spoke with said they had not heard of a hunt like it in North America. Brad Hanson, a wildlife biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service, said the fact that it doesn't happen more often has been a topic of discussion among researchers. He didn't doubt the accuracy of the account.
"It's hard to miss a killer whale when it's halfway out of the water," Hanson said.

John Ford, a whale scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, said similar sightings have been reported in British Columbia, although he said it's a rare occurrence.

The technique is incredible to watch, but it has downfalls. With the enormous weight of the orca flopped onto the beach, it's possible for the animal to get stuck. Female orcas can weigh 7,000 pounds, and males up to 9,000 pounds.

"It's a risky venture," Garrett said.

It's something few people will ever see in their lives. Beach hunting has been documented in Argentina's Patagonia and the Crozet Islands in the Indian Ocean, Garrett said.

But the intelligent animals are innovative: Orcas have been seen tipping ice sheets to knock seals into the water in Antarctica, and in New Zealand killer whales are known to pluck stingrays off the sea floor and toy with them at the surface, he said.

Humboldt State University Marine Laboratory technicians Alyssa Firkus and Susan Sebring were taking water samples by Trinidad Pier when they heard a man shout that there were orcas in the bay. They went to look, and were offered a ride on the water taxi.

Firkus said they watched as the small group of orcas swam toward Indian Beach. The largest whale swam up on shore, half exposed, and thrashed around before backing into the water again, she said.

"That's been my dream since I was 2 years old to see that," Firkus said.

The group of whales then headed toward the boat launch, around the rock near the pier, under the pier and then out to sea, Firkus said.

A pod, or group, of orcas was spotted offshore by the HSU research vessel Coral Sea not long ago, said lab aquarium caretaker Grant Eberle, and orcas have been seen off the mouth of the Klamath River. A group of about 20 were seen off Newport, Ore., within the past two weeks, as well.

There are three types of orcas in the eastern North Pacific. One type eats just about any marine mammal it can get hold of, from seals to whales. Another focuses on fish, especially chinook salmon. Another group stays generally 25 to 30 miles offshore, in the rich continental shelf area, where tuna and sharks are key parts of their diet. The types don't interbreed, even though they sometimes mix.

Source: Mercurynews.com

Killer whale research comes to Shetland

A RESEARCH team from two Scottish universities is due in Shetland tomorrow (Thursday) to embark on a ten week field trip into the social life of local killer whale populations.

During their time in the isles Dr Andy Foote from Aberdeen University and Dr Volker Deecke from St Andrews University will try to get to know as many local killer whales as possible.

Their visit is part of a long term study, which started in 2006, into the population structure of killer whales around Scotland’s coast.

Dr Foote described Shetland as “the real hotspot” for watching killer whales which made it worthwhile to spend the summer in the isles hoping to get as many encounters as possible.

They are asking local people to help them by phoning their mobile on 07500 380 524 with sightings of the mammals.

Dr Foote said: “We are going to move around to wherever the last sighting has been, and will also be scanning the seas from cliffs and other high areas. Once we see whales we will be launching our inflatable and get out there.”

They will start their field trip in the isles with two talks this Friday and Saturday before basing themselves on the island of Yell in response to previous sightings in Bluemull Sound.

He said: “We are trying to get photo identification of different animals, as the white patch behind the dorsal fin is like a finger print unique to every individual. That way we can track individuals across areas and also get an idea of abundance.
“We already got some preliminary results from photos handed in by the public. It looks as though there are more killer whales around our coast than what people think.

“They might be staying around Shetland for most of the time and are only moving offshore a little bit in the winter.”

Last October the researchers witnessed groups with more than 50 killer whales feeding near the local pelagic trawler Adenia, just 10 miles off Shetland.

Their talks of the preliminary results of the study will be held at the Shetland Amenity Trust, in Lerwick, on Friday at 7pm, and at the Winddog Café, in Yell, on Saturday at 6pm. Anyone interested is welcome to come along.

How Not to Ship a Whale

The Flamingo Land saga, and other orca horror stories. Operation Orca part III.

Pender Harbour is a complex jumble of islands, coves and lagoons on the Sunshine Coast about 75 kilometers northwest of Vancouver. The whales first appeared in Gunboat Bay at the head of the harbour, where they were discovered by local fisherman Sonny Reid. The pod exited the bay despite Reid's attempts to contain them but they returned the next day to Garden Bay, another arm of the harbour. Reid and some other fishermen managed to drop a net across the entrance to the bay and trap one of the whales, an adult male almost five metres long.

By the time Murray Newman flew in late that [February 1968] afternoon, the captive had been secured inside a large herring pond consisting of a bag-like net suspended from a frame of logs chained together in a square. The aquarium purchased the animal on the spot and officials decided to leave it for the time being in Garden Bay. Two months later, Reid and his friends captured seven more whales in the bay, and within a few days they had sold five of the animals to various aquariums in California. A crane scooped the animals from the water into waiting trucks, which transported them to the cargo planes that flew them south. No longer vilified and shot on sight, the killer whale had become British Columbia's newest export.

The Vancouver Aquarium purchased the two remaining captives -- a large bull and a calf -- so it now had three whales in Pender Harbour. Newman decided to establish a satellite facility in Garden Bay where the whales could be trained and studied and the public was welcome to watch. The facility, which was ready for its official opening by August, consisted of three large net pens circled by logs, with floating platforms where the captive whales could be observed. Everyone in Pender Harbour was excited at the prospect of the whales becoming a major tourist attraction.

The idea was to study killer whales in their near-natural environment and Spong took charge of the research effort. He continued to use music to stimulate and reward the whales and at times the whale exhibit took on the atmosphere of a countercultural "be-in" with long-haired musicians playing to and swimming with the animals. It was all a bit too "eccentric" for Murray Newman. More importantly, Spong had concluded that the whales -- Skana and the animals in Pender Harbour -- were suffering from sensory deprivation in captivity and should be set free. The smallest whale, Hyak, had been transferred to the main aquarium in Vancouver, and when the other two escaped from their Garden Bay pen, Newman decided to shut down the facility.

In retrospect, the capture and sale of the Pender Harbour whales seems inhumane, but at the time everyone involved assumed that there were thousands of the animals on the coast, and there was still a great deal of fear and animosity directed at them. Graeme Ellis, who, as an eighteen-year-old, was hired by the aquarium that summer to work around the pens, recalled the attitude that prevailed. "It's like a skeleton in my closet, when people ask me, 'You were involved in killer whale capture? How could you?' But at the time, that was what we did. It was just a natural chain of events. It was just happening . . ."

The following June, 1969, Spong's contract with the Vancouver Aquarium expired and Newman, irritated at his views on captivity and alienated by his lifestyle, did not renew it. Spong, who was more or less barred from the facility, camped outside the aquarium to protest Skana's continued confinement, and the episode ended with bad feelings on both sides. Subsequently, Spong was involved with Project Jonah and Greenpeace in their initial protests against commercial whaling, then later moved up the coast to Hanson Island in Johnstone Strait, where he established a research facility, OrcaLab, to monitor killer whales in the wild. His relations with the Vancouver Aquarium remained strained but he would still play a key role in efforts to relocate both Springer and Luna.

The teenagers and the French aristocrat

Lucrative as it sometimes was, killer whale collecting in the 1960s was a seat-of-the-pants enterprise that relied as much on chutzpah and ingenuity as it did on science and experience. Nothing illustrates this as well as the improbable story of how a whale from coastal British Columbia ended up halfway around the world entertaining visitors to an aquarium on the French Riviera.

In December 1969 the whales returned to Pender Harbour, and Sonny Reid and his friends were ready for them. This time they netted a dozen specimens at Madeira Park, another harbour community. Six of the captives escaped or were released, and five were sold to aquariums in California. That left one for two teenage collectors from Vancouver who were acting for a French aristocrat, Roland de la Poype, a decorated fighter pilot who was building his own marineland at Antibes on the Côte d'Azur. Despite their youth, Robin Best and Chris Angus had been collecting animals for several years. Before they could legally vote they already were advertising themselves as "dealers in dolphins, whales and other marine mammals." "We were very young," recalled Chris Angus, "but we were experts because there weren't very many."

Robin was the son of Alan Best, an animal collector himself and the supervisor of the Stanley Park Zoo. His friend Chris had spent his boyhood working around horses. When Moby Doll arrived in Vancouver, the two of them caught whale fever, spending all their spare time hanging out at the Jericho pen. Before long they were collecting river otters and seals for sale to marine parks and zoos, but their ambition was to catch a killer whale. When they heard about the whales in Pender Harbour, they rushed up the coast to see if they could acquire one of the captives for de la Poype. Negotiations took place in a local beer parlour. By this time, Chris and Robin were 18 and 19 respectively, not old enough even to be in the establishment, but they talked their way in and for $16,000 they purchased the remaining whale, a female about 5.5 metres long, which they named Su-san.

Then the hard part began. Angus went back to Vancouver to find an airplane. Most airlines took one look at the long-haired eighteen-year-old looking to charter an aircraft to move a whale and laughed him out of the office, thinking he was probably high on drugs. His search eventually took him to the Georgia Street offices of Lufthansa, the German airline. Lufthansa didn't even fly out of Vancouver at this time but the district manager fell in love with the project and agreed to make a Boeing 707 cargo jet available in Los Angeles. He also made arrangements for another plane to airlift the whale from Vancouver to California.

Bad brakes on the road to Langdale

Next Angus managed to find some fabricators who could throw together an aluminum cradle on a moment's notice. The plan was to transport the whale down from Pender Harbour on the back of a flatbed truck, suspended in a sling inside a vinyl bag in the cradle. Ice water would be sprayed over the animal during the trip to keep its skin wet. Three days after Christmas the two teenagers managed to get Su-san loaded onto the truck, which set off on the 50-kilometre drive down the Sunshine Coast to the ferry terminal. As the truck approached the steep hill that carries the highway into the town of Gibsons, the compressor gave out and with it the vehicle's air brakes. The driver had no choice but to start down the incline with only a hand brake to slow them down. By the time the truck rolled through Gibsons, its clutch was burning up, its brakes were smoking and the three passengers on board were leaning out the doors ready to jump for their lives. Miraculously, they made it onto the ferry, where repairs to the compressor were carried out.

When they drove off the ferry at Horseshoe Bay, a police motorcycle escort ushered them through Vancouver to the airport, where the next surprise awaited them. When a forklift went to load the whale, it was discovered that the cradle did not fit through the doors of the cargo bay. Ever resourceful, the two teens lopped off a section of the cradle and by bending the whale's tail managed to stuff the animal into the back of the plane.

At this point David Taylor took over. Taylor was the veterinarian at the Flamingo Land Zoo, owners of the whale pool in Yorkshire, where Su-san was going to be kept until de la Poype got his facility in Antibes built. He had arrived from England with his animal trainer, Martin Paddly, and the two of them took possession of the whale at the airport. The flight to Los Angeles went off without a hitch and by the next day the whale was on her way to Europe. At that point she was the largest animal ever shipped by air. But Murphy's Law seemed to be plaguing the expedition.

At Manchester, where the big jet was scheduled to land, weather conditions made it impossible to put down. The airline had no landing privileges at London's Heathrow Airport, and the plane was supposed to proceed to Germany, but Taylor was adamant: the whale had to arrive in England. So the pilot radioed Heathrow and announced that he had an emergency on board and had to land. When officials learned that the emergency was a two-tonne whale they were furious, but the plane was already down.

Taylor transferred Su-san to the back of a truck and drove to Yorkshire, pausing at every rest stop to buy boxes of popsicles, which he used to cool down the water inside the vinyl container. At Flamingo Park, where she stayed for several months, the whale was renamed Calypso. Later in 1970 she was transported to Marineland Antibes, but she died that December from an abscess on the lung, a year after being hoisted out of Pender Harbour. (As a postscript to this adventure, Angus recalled that when he and Best eventually met de la Poype, the Frenchman gasped, "You are but a lad!" astonished that he had given so much money to a pair of teenagers.)

Ellis and the albino

Another teenager whose life was transformed by his encounter with killer whales in Pender Harbour was Graeme Ellis. Most of what Ellis knew about the whales he had learned growing up in Campbell River, where the fishing community hated them and Ellis himself passed the time as a boy shooting stones at them with his slingshot. He had just completed high school when Murray Newman hired him to work at the Vancouver Aquarium's out station in Pender Harbour. "I remember the first day," Ellis recalled. "[Trainer Terry McCloud] gave me a bucket and told me to walk along a log to the other end of this pool. I was terrified. First of all, walking along a log anywhere and secondly with a killer whale following me along, so it was an eye opener."

Ellis quickly overcame his fear and grew attached to the animals. When his work with the Aquarium finished early in 1969, he took a job at Sealand of the Pacific, British Columbia's second aquarium. Sealand, located in Oak Bay, was owned by Bob Wright, a Victoria-area marina owner who recognized the commercial potential of captive killer whales. He had purchased his first whale, Haida, from Ted Griffin's Seattle Aquarium, and hired Ellis to train the animal for Sealand's opening that summer. "I was very excited to be working with killer whales again," Ellis said, "because you can't help but get incredibly attached to these animals. They're so bright and it's so rewarding to interact with them."

The exhibits at Sealand also included a bottlenose dolphin named Chloe, a trio of Steller sea lions and a group of seabirds, but Haida was the star of the show and Wright was determined to find him a companion. When he was outbid for one of the Pender Harbour captives that December, Wright decided to go into the capture business himself, little realizing what an unusual animal he would come up with.

Most killer whales are the colour of formal dinner party attire: black back and fins with white front and lapels, and a grey patch at the base of the dorsal fin. On occasion, though, all-white albino whales occur. The first reported sighting of one of these rare animals on the B.C. coast dates back to 1924. Clifford Carl, director of the Royal BC Museum from 1942 to 1969, collected many references to a local albino, which he christened Alice.

One afternoon in January 1970, Bob Wright, Graeme Ellis and a couple of other researchers were out in a boat looking for whales off the southern end of Vancouver Island. They'd had a report of a group of five animals -- transients as it turned out -- in the vicinity of Race Rocks. When they spotted the whales, they discovered that one was white, probably the granddaughter of Alice. The whales swam into Pedder Bay, a narrow notch in the coast west of Victoria, where Wright and his team managed to pen them in with the only net available, a flimsy gillnet filled with holes and too short to reach the sea floor. Concerned that the captives would escape, Wright stationed boats at intervals along the net, and all night members of his team pounded paddles on the sides of the boats and dropped seal bombs -- underwater explosives used by fishermen to frighten away seals -- to keep the whales from approaching the mesh.

A whale to the rescue

When dawn arrived, so did a pair of seiners with more nets to secure the entrance to the bay. For twenty-four days, while Wright held the captives at Pedder Bay, they would not eat the herring and salmon offered to them. At the time the distinction between transients and resident whales was not understood, nor was the fact that transients eat other marine mammals such as seals, sea lions and porpoises, not fish.

But when the white whale, now named Chimo, and another young female, Nootka, were moved to the Sealand facility at Oak Bay, Haida, the resident whale, was able to persuade the newcomers to begin eating. Ellis described what happened. "It was the most amazing thing. We had a safety net across between them and we had someone distracting [Haida] and feeding him, at the other end of the pool. We put in both of these animals and Haida kept coming, going by the net and looking at them through the web. I was in the water watching the net in case an animal got tangled. Haida came along with herring and they both came face to face in the net. He actually pushed herring through the mesh and into their mouths and that's how they started feeding. That happened within minutes of them going in the pool. In retrospect, that totally blows me away. It was really astounding."

Meanwhile, back in Pedder Bay, the other three captives continued their fast, getting slimmer and slimmer. After seventy-five days one of them attempted to burst free through the net, and drowned. A few days later the remaining two finally started eating fish and began regaining their health. Wright had sold them to a Texas aquarium but before they could be moved, someone opened the net during the night and let them go. Over the next few years they were seen often on the coast.

Chimo, who was estimated to be five years old and 3.5 metres in length, attracted all the attention that Bob Wright had expected. She was the only white killer whale in captivity in the world, and following her arrival at Sealand, attendance doubled. Jacques Cousteau paid a visit to see her and Wright reportedly turned down an offer of a million dollars for her.

Unhappily, she began exhibiting a series of health problems. A yellow substance appeared on her skin, lesions formed, she lost weight and her echolocation system appeared to be impaired. Chimo was eventually diagnosed with Chediak Higashi syndrome, an inherited disorder of the immune system, also known in humans, that left her highly susceptible to infections. In late October 1972, Chimo became ill and after five days she died of a streptococcal infection that developed into pneumonia. Nootka was later moved to several different aquariums until she ended up in San Diego, where she lived until 1990.

By 1973, well over a dozen aquariums had purchased killer whales taken from the coast of British Columbia and northern Washington State, and a total of 263 animals had been captured, at least temporarily. The "gold rush" atmosphere had begun to arouse concern among researchers and members of the public. It was one thing to keep a small number of animals for purposes of scientific research. It was quite another to have so many on public display, performing tricks in aquariums and oceanariums.

As a first step toward protecting the killer whale population, the governments of Canada (1970) and Washington State (1971) passed legislation banning the harassment of the animals and requiring a permit to capture one. But it was impossible to establish how many whales could be captured safely without knowing the size of the population. It was widely assumed that there were thousands of the animals, but nobody knew for sure.

Era of the Orca Cowboys.

In the mid 1960s, whale wrangling became a coastal spectacle.

Operation Orca part II

The tiny coastal hamlet of Namu lies on the mainland shore of the Inside Passage about 120 kilometres north of Port Hardy, where coastal boat traffic takes a sharp right turn and heads up Burke Channel toward Bella Coola. Archaeologists have discovered that people have lived there for 10,000 years, making it the oldest known inhabited place on the B.C. coast. Little evidence remains today, but not long ago, Namu was the site of a thriving cannery village with a population of several hundred people during the summer fishing season. It had a café and store, bunkhouses and bungalows for the plant workers and managers, net lofts, an ice plant, even a two-room schoolhouse, all connected by a lacework of sturdy boardwalks.

And in the summer of 1965, the circus came to town.

It began innocently enough. Late on the evening of June 22, a local salmon fisherman named Bill Lechkobit was caught in a sudden gale south of Namu, at the mouth of Warrior Cove. To avoid being swept onto the rocks, Lechkobit cut loose his net and headed for a safe harbour. Early the next morning, his friend and fellow seiner Bob McGarvey emerged from the cove to find two killer whales trapped inside the abandoned net. One was an adult bull, about 6.5 metres long; the other was a young calf.

As McGarvey watched, the current suddenly opened the end of the net and he saw the bull swim free, only to return inside the circle of mesh when the calf would not follow. McGarvey and Lechkobit, who had returned to the scene, realized they had a prize on their hands. Moby Doll had received so much publicity that fishermen all along the coast knew the value of a live killer whale.

They secured the captives with more netting, and within a few hours they had sent word to the outside world that they had a couple of whales for sale. Prospective buyers, including the Vancouver Aquarium's Murray Newman, immediately flew to the tiny cannery village, but they were all dismayed by the asking price, $25,000 per whale. Which, of course, did not include the expense of transporting the animals south. The deal seemed even less attractive a few days later when the calf escaped. Since it was really the younger, smaller whale that the rival aquariums wanted, the captors found themselves with one remaining overpriced animal that might escape at any time and had a healthy appetite for salmon. Meanwhile, they weren't getting any fishing done.

McGarvey and his friend decided to make a final offer: "The first person here with $8,000 in cash gets the whale."

'Can anyone spare a few grand to buy a whale?'

This spurred Ted Griffin into action. Griffin was the 29-year-old owner of the Seattle Marine Aquarium, a facility he had opened on the city's waterfront in 1962. Unlike most of the other aquarium representatives, he was an entrepreneur and a showman, not a scientist. Griffin had long sought a killer whale for his facility. He had spent many hours patrolling Puget Sound by helicopter and boat looking for a specimen, and he wasn't about to let this one get away. He had already been up to Namu, but his initial offer had been refused.

When news of the final price reached him in Seattle, it was a Saturday night and the banks had closed. Griffin grabbed a couple of shopping bags and set out along the waterfront, calling on hotels and restaurants and writing them cheques for whatever cash they had in their tills. Before the weekend was over, his bags were stuffed with small bills and he was on a flight north, accompanied by a gun-toting former Mountie he picked up in Vancouver as a security detail.

Griffin got his whale, which he christened Namu. (Subsequent research has found that it was C11, a member of one of the northern resident pods. C11 was a 20-year-old male whose mother, C5, known as Kwattna, lived until 1995, when she died at the ripe old age of 71.) He then faced the challenge of moving his four-tonne acquisition 700 kilometres along some of the most treacherous waters on the Pacific coast. Although no one knew it at the time, Griffin was pioneering the technique that Springer's rescuers would use 37 years later. With the help of local fishermen, he welded several tonnes of steel bars into a three-sided pen about 12 by 18 metres and six metres deep, kept afloat by empty oil drums scavenged from a local salvage company. A net hung across the open side of the pen.

Meanwhile, other whales regularly visited Namu at Warrior Cove. Some of them were large males with dorsal fins towering two metres in the air. Others were cows and calves. Their high-pitched whistles and squeaks echoed against the rocky shore in a plaintive symphony. On one occasion, as many as three dozen whales showed up to support Namu, splashing around the net, tails lobbing and vocalizing. While most of these whales came and went, one cow and her two calves, presumably members of Namu's family group, remained near the net almost continuously.

Once Griffin got his makeshift cage into the water, it was towed to Warrior Cove, where Namu was coaxed into it. Griffin hired a local purse seiner, the Chamiss Bay, to tow the pen as far as Port Hardy, and on July 9, it set off, accompanied by the Robert E. Lee, a 10-metre pleasure tug owned by Seattle disc jockey Bob Hardwick. For the entire trip, a small group of journalists aboard the Lee filed daily stories about Namu's progress, building public interest in the operation. Also aboard the Lee was Gil Hewlett, a 24-year-old biologist "donated" by the Vancouver Aquarium to assist in the transfer. Hewlett was the lone Canadian involved in the expedition. Journalist Sylvia Fraser described him as "a handsome towhead who was never seen to wear shoes and who looked like a beach boy left over from the latest surf-side movie."

A violent goodbye

At Port Hardy, the Chamiss Bay left to go seining and the tow was taken up by the Ivor Foss, a Seattle tug. Two hours out of Port Hardy, a group of about 10 whales were spotted in the distance converging on the pen. Hewlett described what happened in his journal. "When they are within 300 yards of the pen, Namu lets out a terrifying squeal, almost like a throttled cat. He leaps out of the water and crashes against the left corner of the pen. There was terrific thrashing and he is making all kinds of sounds. Then they are there again, the same family of the cow and two calves. They came straight up behind the pen to about 10 feet away, tremendous squealing going on. Namu seemed to lose all co-ordination in the pen. He kept getting swept against the cargo net and swimming vigorously forward. The family unit circles around towards the end of the pen. Those of us on the pen are yelling and screaming at the top of our lungs. This is an incredible experience. The excitement is almost overwhelming."

Once the tow passed through Seymour Narrows, however, the other whales disappeared. (Years later researchers would learn that the narrows form a boundary between the typical ranges of the northern and southern residents.) On the southern coast, the little flotilla was joined by a growing fleet of pleasure boaters who were curious to see the captive killer. Members of the crew kept busy warning the sightseers to keep their distance. A team of researchers from the Boeing Company's acoustic division had arrived. They were taping Namu's vocalizations for possible application in anti-submarine warfare, and the constant roar of boat engines was interfering with their recording.

At one point, the whale developed blisters on his dorsal fin. Sunburn, it was decided. The convoy was stopped at Deep Bay, opposite the southern end of Denman Island, and Hewlett went off to track down some zinc oxide lotion. He telephoned Jane Van Roggen, a member of the Vancouver Aquarium board who was holidaying in the area and together they drove around to all the local pharmacies. "When we told the pharmacist we needed enough zinc oxide for a killer whale," Hewlett recalled, "he/she either laughed uncontrollably or looked at us incredulously, saying 'zinc oxide only comes in two-ounce tubes!' We bought every tube in the area and took them back to Deep Bay."

Attaching a brush to the end of a bamboo pole, Don Goldsberry, a collector from the aquarium in Tacoma who was part of the transfer team, painted the fin with the zinc oxide mixed with mineral oil. Namu didn't much like it -- indeed, after one coating, he wouldn't let Goldsberry get close again with the brush -- but it seemed to work. At Deep Bay, where the convoy was held up by storm warnings, two young boys with a boat charged 75 cents to take spectators out to view the whale. Meanwhile, at the village's only phone booth, journalists lined up to call in their stories.

Marketing Namu

On July 25, the saltwater caravan reached Deception Pass at the north end of Whidbey Island, where it paused to wait for a tide change. When Hewlett looked up at the bridge that spanned the pass, what he saw astonished him. "The bridge is crowded with people, as are the banks on both sides," Hewlett wrote in his journal. "There must be 5,000 people, with cars lined back for miles on each side. Namu rolls twice and then gave a smack with flukes. The crowd, upon seeing this, gave a cheer -- then the Lee and the Ivor blew their foghorns. I think for the first time, all of us realize how big this whole thing is."

Three days later, welcomed by a flotilla of boats, swooping helicopters, water skiers, go-go dancers and a brass band, Namu reached his future home at Pier 56 on the Seattle waterfront.

Namu was a public relations bonanza that Griffin, whose aquarium needed a financial shot in the arm, exploited to the limit. The whale's image appeared on everything from sweatshirts to colouring books. Namu was front-page news not just in Seattle but around the world. His voice was used at station breaks on Bob Hardwick's radio station. The pilots of passenger jets arriving at the airport reported on his health as routinely as they gave the local weather report. A nightclub launched a new dance craze, the "Namu," including moves like the dorsal, the spray and the dive. Griffin was filmed in his wetsuit riding on Namu's back, gripping the tall dorsal fin.

Within a year, the whale was starring in his own Hollywood movie, Namu the Killer Whale. In the film, a biologist played by the ruggedly handsome Robert Lansing convinces the people in a hostile coastal fishing community that killer whales are not the deadly predators they loathe and fear. Lansing actually did some of his own stunt work, going into the water to ride on Namu's back. These images of a benign, playful, endearing animal, no more dangerous than a large dolphin, reinforced the change that was taking place in the mind of the public about the nature of killer whales.

Namu lived for a year at the Seattle aquarium before he drowned by tangling himself in the cables of his pen trying to escape. But he turned out to be just a dress rehearsal for Ted Griffin, who continued to capture killer whales and sell them to other aquariums. One of these animals belonged to a pod of 15 whales that Griffin netted in Puget Sound early in 1967. Two of the captives drowned and Griffin released another five because they were too big for life in captivity, but one of the survivors remained available for purchase.

Up in Vancouver, Murray Newman was still eager to obtain a whale for his aquarium, and after a spirited debate, he managed to persuade his board of directors to approve the purchase. Griffin was trucking the whale to Vancouver anyway to exhibit in a tank at that year's boat show, and he accepted Newman's offer of $22,000. Walter the Whale, as he was then known, was transferred to the new dolphin pool in Stanley Park, and the Vancouver Aquarium had its first resident killer whale. Soon after, it was noticed that "Walter" was in fact a female, so another contest took place, resulting in a new name, Skana, roughly analogous to S'quana, the Haida word for killer whale.

Skana and the hippie Spong

The presence of Skana at the Aquarium created new possibilities for scientific research. While her trainers taught her an assortment of manoeuvres to showcase her dexterity and intelligence, and impress the thousands of spectators who flocked to see her, a battery of researchers from the aquarium and from the University of British Columbia began studying her behaviour and recording her vocalizing.

Among these scientists was a psychologist named Paul Spong. Spong was a 28-year-old New Zealander with a freshly minted PhD from UCLA, who had just taken a position in the psychiatry department at UBC. At the aquarium, he began by devising a series of tests to evaluate Skana's visual abilities and the ways in which she used visual information to solve problems. He was able to determine that the visual acuity of killer whales was in the same range as that of a cat. Spong began using music instead of food as a reward in his experiments, and he became aware of the whale's response to different sounds. He would play classical music for Skana and invite musicians down to the pool to play their instruments.

At the same time, Spong found himself drawn to the whale emotionally. "Everything I was learning about them showed that this was an extraordinary animal in its sensory makeup and in its ability to modify its behaviour and learn things," he recalled. "I was still doing science because I was trying to do things in systematic experiments, but at the same time I was becoming more personally involved in the whales."

Spong would sit at the edge of the pool with his feet in the water and Skana would swim over to have her back rubbed. On one occasion Skana dragged her teeth across Spong's feet, not biting but serving notice that she could. Startled, Spong jerked his feet out of the water, but he put them back in and Skana once again showed her teeth. After several repetitions, Spong no longer felt afraid and Skana stopped her mock attacks on his feet. As a result of this and other experiences, the scientist became convinced that he was the object of Skana's experiments every bit as much as she was the object of his.

"All of this stuff was really starting to open my eyes," Spong later recalled. "What on earth was this animal that we've got here? Other things were happening too. I was still interested in acoustics and I was interested in using acoustics to find out things like, how high a sound can a whale hear? I was also interested because I was personally intrigued by the whale in a more personal interaction. That's when I started coming down and sitting on the edge of the little training platform at the edge of Skana's pool with my feet in the water. She would come over and I would rub my feet on her head and got to know her a bit more personally.

"It was also at the point where I was making sounds underwater to her and looking at the way she oriented to them. I had this little brass bell and I would ring it on the rung of the ladder in the pool and she loved it. She would come over and hang upside down motionless while I was ringing the bell. With the front of her head fairly close to the bell. This is so consistent with the way in which it was understood that hearing occurs in dolphins where you have a sound that is transmitted through the lower jaw up into middle ear. So it was also confirming in orcas about what was happening with dolphins."

Spong's research aside, his lifestyle was increasingly at odds with the culture of the Vancouver Aquarium. It was the '60s and the baby boom generation had embarked on its flirtation with sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. In Vancouver this youth movement sometimes seemed to be at war with the older generation. Its mouthpiece was the Georgia Straight newspaper, launched in May 1967, and its enemy was Mayor Tom Campbell, whose intolerance of the so-called counterculture manifested itself in several draconian efforts to get the hippies off the streets, including the attempted use of the War Measures Act to "clean up" the city.

Spong embraced the zeitgeist with enthusiasm. His beads, beard and long hair didn't rate a second look in the hippie hangouts of Vancouver's Kitsilano neighbourhood, but he stood out around the whale pool, where, by Newman's own admission, "My staff were mostly a pretty clean-cut bunch of people." Eventually Spong's personal views would lead to a rupture with the aquarium. But whatever antagonisms existed were put aside in the third week of February 1968, when news reached the Aquarium that a pod of killer whales had appeared suddenly in a bay in Pender Harbour.

Operation Orca, by historian Daniel Francis and whale researcher Gil Hewlett, is a Harbour Publishing book. Next Tuesday, in the third excerpt, the authors look at events that turned the tide of opinion against whale capture.

Whales suspend salvage

The recovery of a fuel-laden truck and a container holding 1,000 litres of hydraulic oil from the bottom of Robson Bight Ecological Reserve likely won't take place while a pod of killer whales visits.

The B.C. government yesterday put out a proposal call for recovery of 11 pieces of heavy equipment that fell off a barge last Aug. 20 into the killer-whale sanctuary in Johnstone Strait. The equipment is lying 350 metres down but no leaks have been detected so far, says the Environment Ministry.

The deadline for proposals is June 4. However, the killer whales show up to feed and rub themselves on the rocky shores in June and usually stay until September. The recovery effort is expected to cost $1 million.

Source:The Porvince

They Shoot Orcas, Don't They?

Operation Orca part I

Editor's note: The book Operation Orca recounts the efforts to save Springer in Puget Sound and Luna near Gold River from a lost whale's slow death. In the first of four excerpts that focus on B.C.'s history of orca captures, Francis and Hewlett recall a time not so long ago when the Vancouver Aquarium harpooned an orca that became known as Moby Doll, and simply didn't know what to do next.


In 1964, the Vancouver Aquarium harpooned a whale near Saturna Island.


The beginning of the change in our attitudes about killer whales in British Columbia can be traced back to 1964 and the accidental capture of an orca dubbed Moby Doll. The Vancouver Aquarium was planning its first major expansion and director Murray Newman decided that a life-sized sculpture of a killer whale hanging from the ceiling in the entrance hall would make a dramatic welcome for visitors. There were no killer whales in any aquariums anywhere in the world at the time. The animal was thought to be far too dangerous to capture and put on display. Today we know so much about this fascinating marine mammal we forget that 50 years ago even an expert such as Murray Newman would have known almost nothing about its biology or its habits. And because so little was known, much was imagined.

Most fishermen hated killer whales, or blackfish as they called them, considering them rivals for the precious salmon on which they both depended for a living. Whenever possible, whales were shot on sight. The general public feared them as vicious man-eaters. The animal's easy sociability was interpreted as frightening aggression. The sight of a tall dorsal fin slicing through the water conjured up alarming images of man-eating sharks and other sinister "monsters" of the deep. The fact that the whales travelled in groups brought comparisons to wolves and other predators that hunted in packs. As Murray Newman remarks in his memoirs, the killer whale was considered "the marine world's Public Enemy Number One."

Fishermen, sport and commercial, were confident that the number of killer whales on the Pacific coast was growing and had to be controlled. In 1960, representatives of fishing organizations in the Campbell River area met with officials from the federal Department of Fisheries to discuss the prevalence of "blackfish" in Discovery Passage. Various remedies were proposed, including bombing the animals from the air.

The machine gun at Seymour Narrows

In the end, the fishermen convinced the government to install a Browning machine gun on a lookout on Quadra Island overlooking Seymour Narrows, northwest of Campbell River. The narrows were much used for coastal shipping and by killer whales on their travels along the coast. (In 1958 the government had planted 1,250 tonnes of explosives and blown up Ripple Rock, a dangerous obstacle to navigation in the passage that had ripped open the hulls of dozens of vessels over the years.) It was expected that a gunner would kill as many whales as he could from his perch above the narrows and stop others from coming south into the Campbell River area. But as it turned out there was no shooting. Worried that a bullet might ricochet off the water and strike someone, the fisheries official responsible for the gun told the local people that the weapon was a potential forest fire hazard. Though it was mounted in June 1961, the gun was never fired. Still, the plan illustrates the degree to which killer whales were feared and hated along the coast.

Unhappily, the whales were not unique in this regard. British Columbia has a long history of intolerance and waste when it comes to marine animals. With the arrival of the earliest explorers on the coast in the late 18th century, sea otters began to be harvested for their luxurious pelts. Vessels from Britain and the United States visited the coast each summer, trading otter furs from the local First Nations and carrying them across the Pacific for sale in China. As a result, the animal was exterminated from the B.C. coast and was only reintroduced in the late 1960s.

Large whale species such as humpback, minke and gray were hunted from shore-based whaling operations starting in the 1860s. Industrial whaling was practiced from whaling stations on Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlottes between 1905 and 1967, when the last station at Coal Harbour closed. Humpbacks are a case in point. "Used to be humpbacks all over the place here," one old-timer told the researcher Alexandra Morton, referring to the inner coastal waters of the Broughton Archipelago. In the summer of 1952 a catcher boat came around from the station at Coal Harbour and wiped them out.

Seals and sea lions also fell victim to human predators, shot as pests that threatened the commercial fishery and, in the case of seals during the 1960s, for their skins. Between 1913 and 1969, more than 200,000 harbour seals were killed in British Columbia for pelts and bounties, and sea lions were systematically slaughtered in the name of predator control.

A particularly gruesome hunt targeted the basking shark, the second-largest fish in the world. At one time these creatures, which may reach fifteen metres in length, were abundant along the coast. For all their size they are peaceable giants, feeding on zooplankton in the nutrient-rich ocean waters close to the surface. They do not eat salmon or any other fish, but fishermen considered them a nuisance because they often became entangled in fishing gear. In 1949 the Department of Fisheries labelled them a "destructive pest" and in 1955 the department was persuaded to take aggressive action against the sharks in Barkley Sound, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, where they were especially prevalent.

A large triangular cutting blade was mounted on the bow of a fisheries patrol vessel, the Comox Post. This knife could be lowered just below the surface of the water. When the vessel drove straight into a lounging shark, the blade sliced the animal in half. Between 1955 and 1969, when the blade was in use, hundreds of sharks were slaughtered in the sound. "The great shark slaughter began at noon and continued for hours," wrote a reporter who witnessed one of these excursions in 1956. "We littered the beaches with their livers and the bottom with their carcasses." Other fisheries vessels that were not equipped with the knife had orders to simply ram any sharks they encountered in the hope of killing them. Basking sharks are today almost never encountered in Barkley Sound or anywhere else on the coast.

The harpoon at East Point

Basically, it was open season on any marine animal that seemed to interfere with the fishery or had some commercial value of its own, including the killer whale. Nonetheless, Murray Newman wanted to catch one so enough information could be gathered about its physical features to allow an artist to make an accurate sculpture.

The Aquarium director had one precedent on which to draw. Two years earlier, in the summer of 1962, two marine mammal collectors from California had arrived in B.C. with their 12-metre boat, intending to lasso themselves a killer whale. The idea seemed absurd to most locals, but Frank Brocato and "Boots" Calandrino had a lot of experience wrangling marine animals in the wild, principally for Marineland of the Pacific outside Los Angeles. Their boat was equipped with a long boom extending from its bow, at the end of which was a pulpit where one of the collectors positioned himself to drop a net over the animal and get a rope around its tail.

Brocato and Calandrino managed to find and lasso a female killer whale off Point Roberts, but as the animal attempted to escape she wrapped the line around the boat's propeller. The female's distress call was answered by a large bull and the two whales charged the boat in tandem, veering aside only at the last moment. The collectors, thinking they were under attack, killed the female with a high-powered rifle and drove the male away. Discouraged and not a little rattled from their adventure, they returned to California empty-handed.

The example of Brocato and Calandrino showed how difficult it was to capture a killer whale alive, and initially Newman expected that he would have to kill one. He was advised that the best place to go looking for whales was at the eastern end of Saturna Island, where they often passed close to the sandstone bluffs. There the Aquarium director installed his team, including Sam Burich, a sculptor who also happened to be a commercial fisherman, Ronald Sparrow, another commercial fisherman from the Musqueam First Nation who had experience with a harpoon, a team of volunteer watchers and a patrol vessel on loan from the department of fisheries. They arrived on Saturna on May 22 and set up a camp on the bluff near East Point, opposite Tumbo Island.

While they waited for the whales to appear, Sparrow and Burich practiced with the muzzle-loading harpoon gun, shooting at a raft the patrol boat towed past. As the days lengthened into months, members of the team drifted away. When Ronald Sparrow left to go halibut fishing, he was replaced at the harpoon by Josef Bauer, another commercial fisherman who had a long association with the Vancouver Aquarium. So Burich and Bauer were alone and more than a little bored on July 16 when a pod of killer whales entered the channel. As one of the animals cruised close to shore, Burich took aim and fired. The harpoon struck the whale in the back, just ahead of the dorsal fin. Stunned, the animal hardly reacted at all. Two other members of the pod swam over and seemed to lift the wounded whale to the surface so it could breathe, and it occurred to Bauer that they might be able to make a live capture.

A 'perfectly dreadful' disposition

Alerted at his office in Vancouver, Newman jumped into a seaplane for the trip to Saturna. By the time he arrived, the two "whale hunters" were out beside the stricken animal in a boat that a fishing company had loaned them. Pat McGeer had also arrived. A professor of neurochemistry at UBC, McGeer was a Liberal member of the provincial legislature and a future cabinet minister in Bill Bennett's government. He had joined the whale project because he was eager to get a chance to examine the brain of such a large mammal.

Everyone was very nervous, fearing what the animal or the other pod members might do. Jack Scott, a writer for the Vancouver Sun, had summed up the attitude toward killer whales earlier in the summer. "No one can say for sure how a killer whale will react if the harpoon does not strike a vital spot and, moreover, there's every likelihood that the other bulls in the pack will attack the ship itself, as they have been known to do in the past. Since the bull killer whale runs to 25 feet (7.6 m) in length and has a mouthful of teeth and disposition that can only be described as perfectly dreadful, the possibilities are downright chilling." But right from the beginning, the whale contradicted everything that had been believed about it and made no aggressive moves against its captors.

Newman had no idea what to do. The plan had been to kill a whale, measure it, dissect it and take whatever they needed for study. Instead, they had a live animal and nowhere to put it. The four men decided on the spot to attempt moving the wounded whale across the Strait of Georgia to Vancouver, where Newman made arrangements to house it temporarily at Burrard Drydock on the North Shore. Running all night, Burich and Bauer managed to tow the whale "like a dog on a leash" to North Vancouver, and the next afternoon it took up residence in a netted area of the dry dock.

Moby Doll -- the name was chosen from entries to a radio contest -- caused an immediate sensation. It was not every day that a fearsome killer of the deep was available for public viewing. Stories appeared in media around the world. Scientists from across North America flew in to observe what was going on. When Burrard Drydock opened its doors to visitors, 20,000 people showed up, about the same number as flocked to see the Beatles that summer when they arrived in town to play Empire Stadium in their first stop on a North American tour.

The ling cod and the telltale penis

So little was known about killer whales that no one even knew what sex Moby was or what it ate. The first question was answered by a four-year-old girl who visited the pen. "What's that?" she innocently asked her father, pointing at Moby's suddenly visible penis. Until then everyone had assumed that he was a she.

The second question was more pressing, since the whale did not eat for almost two months despite being offered a wide variety of food, including seal carcasses, poultry, whale tongues and blubber, even an octopus. As yet it was not understood that unlike their transient cousins, resident killer whales such as Moby ate only fish. This discovery was made finally when a visitor to the pen held out a lingcod and Moby took it. Offered another, he ate that one, too. Before the feeding was over, Moby had devoured fifty kilograms of cod and taught his keepers another lesson about killer whales.

After several days in the dry dock, the Aquarium moved Moby across Burrard Inlet to a purpose-built enclosure at the Jericho military base on the Point Grey waterfront. Pat McGeer ministered to the animal's medical needs, using a huge hypodermic needle at the end of a three-metre pole to inject Moby with antibiotics and vitamins. Once started, he ate hungrily. But something was wrong, and on Oct. 9, less than three months after he was captured, Moby Doll died. The cause of death was aspergillosis, a fungal disease that invaded his lungs.

Sam Burich, who had been one of Moby's caretakers throughout his captivity, completed his sculpture for the Aquarium. (It hung for years in the foyer until it was removed to make way for a new pavilion.) But his widow Helen recalled that his experience with Moby altered his attitude toward killer whales. The artist seemed to bond with the animal. He recognized its intelligence and gentleness and regretted the role he had played in removing it from the wild.

Burich's change of heart was symptomatic of the change that took place in the wider community during and after the Moby Doll episode. For the first time people had had a chance to get close to a killer whale. Instead of a fearsome man-eating predator, they discovered an amiable creature that was endearing and apparently smart. Scientists and members of the public alike began to suspect that they had been wrong about "public enemy number one."

However, Moby Doll's capture also had a downside for the animal. As Murray Newman noted in his memoirs, "the age of innocence was over" for killer whales. Once it became known that Marineland of the Pacific had been willing to pay $25,000 to obtain Moby, killer whales everywhere had price tags on their heads. Notice was served that major aquariums wanted live specimens and would pay handsomely for them. The result was the equivalent of a maritime gold rush, and sea-going "prospectors" set out to find the motherlode.

Observing Orcas: Migrating whale pods return, and tours gear up in the San Juan Islands

Bart Rulon was in a kayak the first time he had a close encounter with a killer whale.

The wildlife artist relocated to the Northwest from Kentucky when he was in his early 20s to photograph the massive animals, also known as orcas. During a trip to the San Juan Islands, an adult male swam toward him.

"Six-foot-tall dorsal fin, 30 feet long and 10,000 pounds," the Whidbey Island resident recalled. "It went right under my kayak. My heart was in my throat."

Regular brushes with the majestic mammals could begin again soon. Whale watching tours targeting orcas have begun in the San Juan Islands, coinciding with the animals' return to local waters.

The orcas, which are actually the world's largest species of dolphin, are drawn to the area for one big reason: food.

Three groups, also known as pods, generally arrive in the San Juans between May and July to hunt chinook salmon. Additionally, lone orcas, or transients, already have been spotted in local waters, chasing seals and other marine life.

Killer whales earned their deadly name because of their huge size and carnivorous tastes, but the distinctive black-and-white animals attract tourists for a less lethal reason.

"They're quite beautiful -- the panda of the seas," said Ken Balcomb, a senior scientist for the Center for Whale Research in Friday Harbor. "They're lovable."

Rulon, now 39, tends to agree. Along with teaching wildlife illustration at the University of Washington, this spring and summer he will serve as a naturalist for Island Adventures out of Anacortes.

During trips, visitors might see orcas perform a number of behaviors, he said. Along with feeding, the orcas sometimes leap out of the water, poke their heads up to look around, or do aquatic cartwheels, propelling their tails up and over their heads.

If visitors are exceptionally lucky, other surprises could be in store.

"They might have a new calf with them," Rulon said of one unknown. "Every time that pods come in, everybody's excited to see."

Carl Williams, a captain for Island Adventures, also is geared up for a glimpse of the orcas. Williams, who used to take tourists on whale watching trips in Hawaii, takes his work seriously. About 98 percent of the time he can find orcas.

"When I don't, it's very disappointing," he said. "I go home probably more upset than the customers."

Granted, those customers might see other wildlife, including seals, gray whales and minke whales. But it's orcas that remain the biggest summer draw.

Generally, there are plenty to see. Outside the transients, the three pods are expected to include a total of 87 whales. They generally stay in the area until October, Balcomb said.

While the pods usually keep to themselves, on rare occasions, all three can be seen swimming, hunting and playing together.

"Super pod day is a super day," Williams said. "They're interacting among themselves. It's crazy."

Pod the t-orca the town

Whale watchers played a game of cat-and-mouse as a pod of hungry orcas swam back and forth along the Whangarei coastline yesterday.

The whales were first spotted on Tuesday in the Bay of Islands and on Wednesday had moved to Mimiwhangata.

By yesterday quite a crowd had gathered on the Whangarei Harbour between Taurikura and Urquharts Bay - all clutching their cameras and hoping to get a good shot of the mammals.

As the whales glided along the coastline, the engrossed humans hopped in and out of their cars, slamming their brakes on at various points to jump out and take photographs.





Tourists and locals, whale researchers and roadworkers, nature photographers and inquisitive passers-by all jostled for space as the pod of 17 orcas dipped and dived under the glassy water.
"I bet the whales are wondering what all the fuss is about. They're probably saying: `What are all these people looking at?'," said one keen spectator.

The orcas had come in to feed on stingrays but the wily prey knew they were targeted for dinner and hundreds clustered close to the shoreline hoping to avoid the great orca jaws.

The stingrays drew the whales closer to shore - at one point two orcas hurtled towards a wooden jetty at Taurikura crowded with whale watchers, swerving only at the last moment.

The enthralled crowd gasped as the orcas playfully showed off the size of their stomachs as they curved around the jetty and swum out to sea.

Whangarei orca expert Ingrid Visser said the pod was made up of 17 whales, including two baby calves less than two weeks old.

"I don't know what it is about orcas that makes them so mesmerising to people but once you start watching them it's addictive. They're absolutely phenomenal creatures, they could eat sharks for breakfast so maybe it's their sheer size that makes us find them so incredible," she said.

And Ms Visser couldn't resist taking a dive with her old friends. "Anzac's here, who was first spotted on Anzac Day 2005. There's Nobby who I've known since he was a little boy in 1992. There's Slean, and Miracle and her calf Magic. Miracle stranded in 1993 but was saved so it just shows how we can help."

While swimming with the whales, Ms Visser found a one-metre wide ray that had been half-eaten by an orca. "There are fewer than 200 orca living around New Zealand so to have them swimming around in the Whangarei Harbour is pretty amazing."

Searching for whales in Norway

GETTING ready for my date with killer whales, I felt excited, impatient and just a bit cumbersome, like some medieval knight preparing for the ritual slaughter of the jousting field.

First, they ushered us into a hotel alongside a craggy Norwegian fjord. Then they made us squeeze into bulky survival suits to keep us safe in waters cold enough to kill. I duly pushed and shoved at various limbs, forcing my way into snapping, blubbery rubbers.

I also caused a sharp cry of pain as I tried to help an elderly woman put on her gloves. Go on, she insisted, go on ... ouch! Then we tramped outside into the overcast morning like a chorus line of Mr Blobbies, climbing into rubber boats to look for orcas - killer whales - so that we could slip into the water and swim alongside these magnificent beasts.

Why do we do these things? It seemed obvious, a point not even worth considering, as we whizzed along, boat bouncing madly, until in a calmer patch the captain killed the engine and said: “In you go.”
Such a strange sensation. The water was sharp on my cheeks, yet I was almost warm; a weirdly contradictory feeling, floating on a cushion of suit-trapped air, weightless as if in space. Staring down, I could see shoals of fish, sea anemones, pink starfish - an entire world no longer out of reach.

But no killer whales. Not a one. And the awful truth is that it had been exactly the same the day before when we had prepared for this pivotal moment with a more sedate whale-spotting boat ride up the coast and back. So now, as I wallowed in my rubber suit, I was left reflecting on what exactly ought to happen when holidays such as this go wrong.

It is, in fact, a question many nature-lovers will have to face at some stage. Any trip that centres on real wildlife (the kind that doesn't get tethered) carries an inbuilt risk of failure. That's the point. Nature is unpredictable, it's her elusive charm, because without the no-show risk there would be no sense of privileged awe when the curtain finally does go up. Which means that at some stage we must pay the price of risk. And here we were, floundering back to the boat after our chilly-warm swim, trying to assess the pleasures of failure.

A dozen of us had flown here to Tysfjord for this three-night experience, changing aircraft at Oslo, feeling the weight of expectation intensify with each air mile. About 700 orcas feed around this coast during November to January, trailing a unique concentration of herring - 10 million tonnes - which they lash into “carousel” style, forcing their prey into a ball which they whack with tail flukes before feasting. Many tourists come simply to watch - others, like me, to swim.

John, a biologist, said that he had come because he wanted to experience life with five sea creatures, including the hammerhead shark and the giant octopus, while Julie, from Suffolk, said that she liked the look on friends' faces when telling them that she planned to snorkel with killer whales - the lure of the anecdote. That was pretty much my view: the sense of being special.

On the first day we took a six-hour boat ride along the fjord with about 30 other tourists - an extraordinary journey in its own right. The ride was slow and calming. The sky was a dappled palate of steel and pewter rimmed by a range of frosted, toothy mountains falling into the water, tapering into islands and then to nothing, beyond sight. The landscape of northern Norway requires a vocabulary all its own. It is as mystic as a Nordic fable; as powerful as a living creature.

We chatted as we bumped along. Ate fish soup (made jokes about this being the closest we would come to an orca). Took endless photos. We were ... merely resigned, at the end, when the orcas failed to materialise. “That's wildlife for you,” shrugged John, strolling down the gangplank, heading for the coach.

That evening, after a vast buffet and costly beers, we watched DVDs of earlier trips positively crammed with orca sightings - which was rather rubbing our noses in it, we laughed. And there were lectures on the orca(the room was packed) and, later, on the herring.

Next morning, one of the most poignantly perfect moments of the break struck me in an almost careless fashion just before breakfast, holding me rooted in the snow for the sight of the most extraordinary sunrise I have ever seen. There was more like this, and these were precisely the moments I was to look back on; the lectures, sights, sunrises, landscapes were pleasures I didn't consider too much at the time because I was locked into anticipation. But, later, floundering in my Blobby suit, I realised that they made a pattern of their own.

Of all those in the group, 79-year-old Donalda was the most remarkable on the trip. A retired doctor, she was the one whose arm I almost broke while trying to force on her gloves. But she forgave me, later telling me that she had been really quite timid until bumping into her younger friend June, a lithe sixtysomething, who took her on all sorts of wild trips. So here I was, chatting to a pensioner who wanted to swim in near-freezing waters with killer whales, and it was as much a surprise, a pleasure, as that dawn. So it went on.

To be fair to the tour operator Explore, it says that normally all their clients see orcas on these trips. But migratory patterns vary, and my own view was that clients should have been made more firmly aware beforehand that failures were possible, not because it would - or should - stop them coming, but because attitudes at the end can depend on expectations.

Global first as orcas filmed hunting in Bay

In a global environmental first, five orcas have been filmed hunting and killing a dolphin in Algoa Bay.



The world class eco- tourism event was witnessed, photographed and filmed by Port Elizabeth- based dive tour operator Rainer Schimpf of Expert- Tours, boat skipper Louis van Aardt of Pro Dive and four foreign dive tourists – including Swiss diver Pascal Fazio, who shot this amazing photograph.

In an equally amazing sequel to the kill, five members of the crew then joined the “killer whales” in the water and captured further footage underwater, in what is believed to be a first for South African waters.

Orcas live mainly near the north and south poles but are occasionally spotted by fishermen at this time of year in Algoa Bay.

But capturing the dolphin hunt on film and joining the huge predators beneath the surface was what made the event world class, Schimpf said.

Expert-Tours‘ “advanced sardine run” offers tourists the opportunity to see ocean predators feeding on baitballs of sardine, and the crew was on the lookout for dolphins as a signal of activity below, Schimpf said.

“We were on our way back into the bay after an excursion to Maitlands on Friday. We had stopped to refuel off Cape Recife and realised that a pod of dolphins was coming up behind us. Then we saw the giant fins behind them closing in with incredible speed – and we knew it was orcas as well.”

There were five of them, comprising two 7m animals, probably males, two females of 5m and a calf of about 3m, he said.

“As we followed them we saw them separate one dolphin from the rest of the pod and bump it out of the water. They did this a number of times until it was just lying unconscious on the surface. Then they grabbed it and pulled it below.

“It was sad for the dolphin but it was obviously a hunting lesson for the calf and it was mind-blowing to be able to capture it on film.”

Fazio, 36, who comes from Zug in Switzerland, said he had been simply lucky to get the definitive shot of the orca knocking the hapless dolphin into the air. “I was waiting for the perfect opportunity and it came. It was one of the most special moments I have ever experienced.”

The orcas then left their chase and became aware of the boat and slowed down and circled it, Schmidt said.

“My four clients and I decided to join them in the water. While orcas in the northern hemisphere feed mostly on fish like herring, the species in the south focuses on mammals like seals and dolphins, so we were cautious.

“But they were just curious, and quite friendly. At one point the mother of the calf brought it towards us, shielded against her side as if to show us to it.”

Schimpf, who is also spokesman for the marine conservation lobby group Ocean Messengers, said the event was further evidence that “Algoa Bay offers the best dive opportunities world-wide.... and needs to be protected accordingly.

“It is a heritage of enormous tourism value and has huge potential to support eco-friendly business, for present and future generations.”

Connect the dots to save orcas, salmon

Most people realize that saving Puget Sound's beloved resident orca whales depends on saving the Sound itself, removing the toxic chemicals that are killing the whales, preventing oil spills, and restoring the orcas' essential food, salmon.

But it may be news that our local orcas also depend on restoring salmon runs in the Columbia River Basin. Recent reports of the dramatic declines in West Coast salmon populations make this connection between the mighty Columbia and Snake rivers and our endangered orcas all the more crucial to examine.



Orca and salmon scientists alike have identified the Columbia River Basin, which once produced more salmon than any other river system on Earth, as an essential food source for southern resident orcas during their seasonal travels away from Puget Sound to coastal waters. In fact, the federal government's orca-recovery plan cites the decline in Columbia River Basin salmon as "perhaps the single greatest change in food availability for resident killer whales since the late 1800s."

Strangely, though, the plan does not call for the one action scientists say is central to any Columbia Basin salmon-recovery plan: removal of four costly and outdated dams on the Lower Snake River, a tributary of the Columbia.

Removing these dams will open up more than 15 million acres of nearly pristine spawning habitat to endangered salmon, while saving taxpayers' and electric ratepayers' money. Energy conservation and renewable energy can replace the small amount of power provided by these four dams, keeping in mind that there are more than 200 dams in the basin.

Climate change makes removing the dams even more important, because the salmon and steelhead that will be saved are more likely to survive warmer temperatures. These fish spawn at higher elevations than any other — some at over 6,000 feet above sea level, where streams are likely to stay cooler. Removing the dams will also lower water temperatures downstream, providing help to fish in the lower river system.

Despite these benefits, the orca-recovery plan notes only that dam removal will be addressed "elsewhere." Unfortunately, we can't find where that "elsewhere" is. The logical place to look would be in the federal government's recovery plan for salmon. But in the most recent draft of that plan, Snake River dam removal is not even considered for further study, much less as a potential action.

A new draft is due by May 5 (after its predecessors were struck down by the federal courts for violating the Endangered Species Act) — that's where we'll be looking next. The current version of the federal salmon plan doesn't even make any reference to southern resident orcas, a federally listed endangered species that the same agency is obligated to restore.

What we have here is a total disconnect. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is responsible for recovering both salmon and orcas. Its scientists have connected the dots. It's time for NOAA's decision-makers to put it together, too.

As it stands, the federal salmon plan won't get us where we need to be if we want a healthy population of southern resident orcas plying the waters of Puget Sound for generations to come. And it certainly won't do the job for Columbia Basin salmon, either.

When the final salmon plan is released in a few weeks, we will be watching closely to see whether it lays out a plan for real salmon recovery in the Columbia Basin. We ask Gov. Christine Gregoire and Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell to hold NOAA accountable to its mandate to protect and restore both orcas and salmon. Our leaders need to demand that NOAA take the necessary actions, including the removal of the Lower Snake River dams.

The alternative is to be honest about the result of inaction: that this crucial food source will never be restored and the orcas must somehow survive without it — if they can.

By Kathy Fletcher and Howard Garrett

Special to The Times

Kathy Fletcher is founder and executive director of People For Puget Sound. Howard Garrett is founder and director of Orca Network and the author of "Orcas in Our Midst."

Source: The Seattle Times