The orca—otherwise known as the killer whale—is one of earth’s most intelligent animals. Remarkably sophisticated, orcas have languages and cultures and even long-term memories, and their capacity for echolocation is nothing short of a sixth sense. They are also benign and gentle, which makes the story of the captive-orca industry—and the endangerment of their population in Puget Sound—that much more damning.
In Of Orcas and Men, a marvelously compelling mix of cultural history, environmental reporting, and scientific research, David Neiwert explores an extraordinary species and its occasionally fraught relationship with human beings. Beginning with their role in myth and contemporary popular culture, Neiwert shows how killer whales came to capture our imaginations, and brings to life the often catastrophic environmental consequences of that appeal.
In the tradition of Barry Lopez’s classic Of Wolves and Men, David Neiwert’s book is a triumph of reporting, observation, and research, and a powerful tribute to one of the animal kingdom’s most remarkable members.
Drawing by Yukie Adams
Copyright
This edition first published in hardcover in the United States in 2015 by
The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.
141 Wooster Street
New York, NY 10012
www.overlookpress.com
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Copyright © 2015 David Neiwert
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
ISBN: 978-1-4683-0865-5
ISBN: 978-1-4683-1229-4 (e-book)
To Lisa, who makes everything possible
A dolphin appears to be a “who,” not a “what”—a being, not an object—with a sophisticated, individual awareness of the world.
—THOMAS I. WHITE, In Defense of Dolphins
A human being is part of a whole, called by us the universe. A part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures.
—ALBERT EINSTEIN
CHAPTER One
Close Encounters
YOU WILL OFTEN HEAR IT BEFORE YOU SEE IT; SOMEWHERE IN THE lowering gray fog, there is the loud, almost popping kooosh sound. Then you see it: The towering black fin, six feet high, gliding out of the water atop the massive back of a thirty-foot killer whale. Directly toward your little kayak.
You may have prepared for this moment. You may know full well that wild orcas have never been known to attack human beings. You may have observed them around boats and kayaks, and you may already know that these graceful behemoths are in complete control of their whereabouts and always avoid contact. You may have even experienced this previously.
L78, “Solstice,” surfaces near my kayak.
It doesn’t matter. Your stomach will still disappear into your body, and you will feel puny and powerless. You will know that you are at the mercy of a gigantic predator, the undisputed ruler of the ocean. You may also observe that you had no idea something so large could move so easily and gracefully and quickly through the water toward you.
• • •
Profoundly humbling experiences are good for our souls: those knee-knocking, gut-emptying, jaw-dropping, life-altering moments when you come flat up against the reality that we are each, no matter how big our egos or incomes, insignificant flesh-specks fortunate enough to be alive in this grand universe, those moments such as when we stay up late to see the Milky Way on a summer’s night in the Rockies, or stand agape at the edge of the Grand Canyon or an erupting volcano in Hawaii, or watch the birth of our own child. Of all these, there are few as deeply affecting as having an encounter in the wild with one of nature’s premier meat-eaters, and of these, none are as profound as having a five-ton killer whale with a towering dorsal fin come looming toward your kayak out of the fog.
It’s one thing to see a lion, or a bear, or a shark, or even an orca behind glass at a zoo or aquarium. You can’t help but be impressed, of course, not just with the magnificence of the animals, but also with your real gratitude that the glass is there between you. At the same time, there are hardly ever any real interactions with captive animals, at least hardly any that are good for either animal or audience. The barrier keeps everything at a safe remove. This is especially so at the marine parks where orcas are put on display for audiences to “ooh” and “aah” as they perform astonishing stunts of grace and intelligence.
But to encounter such a creature in the wild—well, that’s something else.
Over the years, I’ve been fortunate enough to have had three such encounters in the Rockies, two of them with grizzly bears that happened to be using the same trail on which I was hiking and then biking. The other was really just a brief but chilling glimpse from the trail I was traversing of a mountain lion running in the other direction. It doesn’t matter how big or tough you might think you are or how well you’ve prepared yourself intellectually for these encounters (frequent visitors to the woods, if they’re savvy at all, will always read up on the best techniques for surviving these encounters). Your mind will go blank, your stomach will become a massive black hole, and your body will be seized with a nearly uncontrollable urge to get far from this location as quickly as possible.
This has always felt primeval and visceral, part of our human hard-wiring. Survival of the fittest is often a matter of effective flight, especially for a species such as ours. Man is a top-tier predator with his gadgets and guns at hand, but without them he is just prey like any other, particularly when it comes to the real top-of-the-food-chain predators like sharks and tigers. Before we invented our killing technology, we probably survived by knowing when and where to run.
Fortunately, my wild encounters in the Rockies were utterly harmless. They drove home, however, a lesson not to be forgotten about humans’ relative puniness in the grand scheme of the living world. Sure, I could always bring along a good can of bear spray (and tended to thereafter), but the truth is that even that is never a sure thing. Guns are similarly about as useful; one might scare them off, but grizzlies in particular are known to easily absorb or deflect gunshots. If one wants to eat you or just kill you, it probably will.
Killer whales are the planet’s only apex predator about whom you can say that the potential for being killed and eaten really doesn’t exist. Even though they have been observed countless times over the centuries devouring species ranging from humpback whales to sea lions to moose, there have been only a few recorded attacks on humans by orcas in the wild, and those mostly against boats carrying humans. (This benign relationship with humans cannot be said of orcas in captivity, but that is another part of our story.) And yes, you can tell yourself, as you launch your kayak into waters frequented by killer whales, fully aware—indeed, often eagerly hopeful—that you might encounter them there, that you will not be in danger. However, when the reality comes to pass, and that six-foot fin comes looming toward you out of the gray mist, you remember none of that.
You won’t always get the auditory warning. If it is a typical clear summer day in the Sa
n Juan Islands, you can see them approaching along with the phalanx of whale-watching boats they attract that time of year. A good watchful eye will still be able to spot them at a distance on a seasonal grey and fogbound day, since even when they are at their most jagged and furious, there is little mistaking the way an orca’s dorsal fin erupts from the surface of Haro Strait waters.
Still, more often than not, you will know with utter certainty that you are occupying the territory of killer whales when you hear them breathe, a sound that moves across the surface of the ocean at a remarkable distance, the popping sound of pursed lips exhaling in a whooshing burst, followed by the heavy intake of the big breath the orca takes in. When you hear this sound—and then you spot the misty plume of expelled whale breath and the scythe-like black fin cutting through the water—you become acutely aware that you are now in the water with a very large animal with very large teeth, easily capable of knocking you into the water. If you are an ethical and considerate kayaker, you have already tucked into a cove or kelp bed, well out of the whale’s path, but that is only a partial comfort, because no matter what, you are at its mercy.
This, naturally, evokes that primeval response, the blank mind, the emptied insides, the powerful urge to flee. Stuck in a kayak, all you really can do is try to make sure you’re out of its path and let the orca do the rest, and no matter how well you may have prepared yourself, your heart will be in your mouth.
There are two exceptions to this rule. The first applies to the scientists and naturalists who see the whales daily in the course of their work, and almost universally for these people, the electricity of the encounters becomes less intense, while the awe and wonder that the whales inspire is replaced after a while with profound respect and deep affection.
The second exception applies to three-year-olds.
• • •
When my daughter Fiona was three, we went out for a paddle on the west side of San Juan Island, where we were camping. My brother’s wife, Trish, was in the front of our long two-person kayak, which features a center hatch containing a child seat, complete with a nicely retentive spray skirt. That’s where Fiona was seated when we came upon the killer whales.
We really weren’t expecting to see any orcas that afternoon. Sightings had been scarce the previous few days, and then a pod of about twelve whales came by the park where we camped that morning. Most of us had watched from shore as they swam past, headed north. The grownups’ low expectations notwithstanding, Fiona was still hopeful we would see the whales. The night before, as she had snuggled into her sleeping bag, I had read her a book by a local children’s author, Paul Owen Lewis, titled Davy’s Dream, about a boy with a sailboat who befriends the local orcas by, among other things, singing to them. So when we got in the kayak, despite my warnings not to be disappointed, she felt certain we would see them ourselves that day.
The water was glassy and calm, the day windless, and the currents, which, in the San Juan Islands, can become powerfully riverlike, were mild and easy. About three quarters of a mile south of camp, we rounded a corner from which the park was no longer visible, and almost simultaneously, we came upon the orcas. Actually, they were still quite a ways off, but we knew they were there because the daily flotilla of whale-watching boats that accompany the resident pods from about 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day in the summer was forming at the southern end of our view, near the Lime Kiln Point lighthouse. And then we heard them. And then we saw them: tall black fins, heading more or less in our direction.
We were already close to the rock-cliff shoreline, and I tucked the big kayak in a little closer, although I knew it made little difference in whether the whales decided to pay a visit or just trucked on past at cruising speed, as they so often do. That kooosh sound, wafting over the half-mile distance between us, announced their presence as well as the fact that we were now in their territory and we were at their mercy. They went where they wanted, at whatever speed suited them. They were large and in charge.
I barely needed to point them out to Fiona; she heard the blows, saw the big fins at the same time as both Trish and I. Still, I talked to her: “Here they come, honey! See them?”
Oh yeah, she saw them, and she began singing to them.
Her favorite movie at the time was the Disney musical version of The Little Mermaid (yes, she loved and still loves all things oceanic), which at one point (during key transformation scenes) features a lilting three-note choral melody, and this was what she chose to sing to the approaching orcas. She was relentless, too.
“Ah ah ah … Ah ah ah … Ah ah ah …”
The whales appeared to be in rapid-transit mode as they approached, but now they were slowing down and milling, as if they were hunting the Chinook salmon that are their dietary staple. It took ten minutes or so for them to pass in front of us, but Fiona sang that theme for the entire time. And it was a close pass.
A large male, with one of those six-foot dorsal fins, burst with a kooosh out of the water about twenty yards away from us, swimming in a line perpendicular to the boat. We could hear the deep inhale that usually followed. And then he went down and swam away.
“See, Daddy?” Fiona cried. “It worked!”
• • •
We laughed heartily, but I am not entirely certain she wasn’t right, because the big male wasn’t the only orca who visited us that day. Shortly after that initial encounter, I spotted another orca coming in very close to the rocky shore, behind our kayak. When she submerged, I could see her, clearly diverting in our direction, and I could see her white eyepatch. She was turned on one side and looking up at us. Actually, looking up at Fiona, it seemed to me.
Sure enough, she surfaced shortly, no more than ten yards behind my rudder, and spouted on us. I know people who crave being spouted on, but trust me, it’s a mixed blessing. Whale breath reeks of rotting and half-digested fish. Despite all that, it was thrilling and not just a little disturbing.
Was she attracted by Fiona’s singing? Or perhaps just by Fiona herself? And if the latter, was it an interspecies matronly response to a young child? Or was it perhaps because she made a potentially interesting lunchtime meal?
I knew, of course, that the latter was beyond unlikely. Recorded attacks on humans by killer whales in the wild could be counted fewer than the fingers of one hand and never with this particular population of orcas. However, that barely salved my conscience. A little later that summer, this same pod of whales was observed “playing” with some of the resident Dall’s porpoises—little black-and-white dog-sized cetaceans who can dart through the water at 30 knots and who typically are ignored by these salmon-eating orcas—by taking them underwater and keeping them there. Eventually, the little porpoises would disappear.
There was no doubt that day or on any of the many subsequent summer days Fiona and her mother and I have spent in the occasional company of killer whales that we were at the mercy of those whales. That’s a good word for it. Indeed, in their encounters, “mercy” is the word I think most aptly describes the common response of orcas to humans. Unlike their counterparts among apex predators—say, grizzly bears or great white sharks—the encounters inevitably are benign and harmless. However, you can’t help but be acutely aware of the whales’ forbearance. They could easily bring you to grief, but they choose an intelligent path. They are at best mildly curious about you, or more often they are just supremely unafraid and pay you little mind.
I’ve been observing these orcas for many years—mostly from shore, but also from a variety of watercraft—and have yet to see a single instance of one of them having even slight contact with a boat (though you know it must happen on occasion, as the propeller-induced notches on some of the whales’ fins silently attest). Despite their immense size, these whales are phenomenally graceful in the open sea and utterly in control in their world. This despite humans’ best attempts to provoke them.
I’ve seen an idiot kayaker dart out directly into the path of an approaching male orca in order to e
xperience that “spout” and the ensuing close proximity to a wild whale. Of course, all that happened was that the oncoming whale dove quickly before reaching him and then stayed submerged for another couple of hundred yards, by which time the orca had passed by all of the other kayakers in the man’s group who had also come to see whales that day. Cluelessly, the kayaker raised his paddle with both arms and celebrated with a “Yoo hoo!”
I’ve seen sport fishermen rev up their little twenty-footers and go roaring at twenty knots directly through the middle of a pod of whales who had attracted a crowd of whale-watch boats. Just as they hit the point where the pod had been the thickest, a large male stuck his head straight up into the air in what’s called a “spyhop” and then quickly sank back as the little fishing boat whizzed by, only feet away. I’m not sure who would have been damaged more, the fishermen or the whale, but it wouldn’t have been pretty.
There’s a local legend in the Pacific Northwest about a group of three drunken fishermen who, in their little skiff, approached a pod of resident orcas near shore. They were observed by witnesses inexplicably harassing a big male, whose length exceeded that of their boat by ten feet. Finally the fed-up male charged the skiff and, just before hitting it, leapt in a half breach parallel to the boat, sending up a huge wave that washed the three men out of the boat and into the water. Their cries of terror rang in the air as they attempted to scramble back into the skiff, especially since the big male and his black fin kept lingering in the area. Of course, the orca was merciful and let them return untouched to the boat. The soaked drunks scurried back to harbor, and the whales headed wherever they were headed.
A speeding recreational boater in a near-collision with a spyhopping orca.
Really, you don’t want to be messing with a five-ton superpredator, no matter how cuddly he may be made to look at SeaWorld.
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