Fate of displaced whale stirs debate

GOLD RIVER, B.C. -- The captain of the vessel that will locate the whale this day is known around here simply as Radar. Although he sports dirty fingernails, unkempt silver-gray locks and eyeglasses in serious debt to duct tape, Radar is a soft-spoken, kind and highly capable old salt.

Alongside him is environmentalist Marc Pakenham, recently retired from the Canadian government and still running the Marine Mammal Monitoring Project, or M3. He wants to check on the condition of Luna, a 3-year-old orca that belongs back in Puget Sound but lost his way more than a year and a half ago.


		Scott Eklund / P-I
	As captain Glen Hammond looked for Luna, Luna rose and touched the bill of his hat. This sort of activity causes Luna's monitors to cringe because it will make it more difficult for Luna to reunite with his pod.

The battery in Pakenham's boat isn't reliable, so he and two hangers-on are hitching a ride aboard Radar's salvage-logging boat, the Jervis Bay. Its handrails are crumpled, its hull bashed in. The wheelhouse, redolent of oil, is jammed with an old outboard, a chain saw, miscellaneous boat parts stuffed into milk crates and a water-damaged copy of "Boatowner's Mechanical and Electrical Manual."

Radar lights a Players Filter. He nods toward an open-flamed stove fighting a losing battle against the chill of the cramped wheelhouse.

"Don't get too close to that," Radar warns.

Lately, the little orca has been getting way too close to people and boats, begging for attention. The lonely whale is on his way to becoming the local pet.

Conservationists and government officials worry that Luna will grow too people-friendly, turn tame and never rejoin a Puget Sound orca family already ravaged by pollution and other woes. A slow-moving Canadian government needs to do something soon, activists say.

In the next month, the government plans to assemble a panel of orca experts to start figuring out what's best for Luna.

Should he be left alone?

Should he be captured and taken back to his family?

Another wayward young whale named Springer was plucked from the Sound and ferried to her Canadian home waters amid breathless news coverage last year. But since spring 2001, Luna has wandered the remote back bays of Nootka Sound in northwestern Vancouver Island, largely ignored 200 miles from the summer range of his nearest relatives.

Lacking any contact with his kind, Luna craves intimacy. And some folks here are only too happy to oblige. They've grown quite comfortable -- casual, even -- with this American whale in their charge.

One young spectator recently wondered aloud what would happen if he stuffed a soda bottle in the whale's blowhole. Last summer, someone poured beer down Luna's throat. People have swum with him, tried to "helpfully" wipe away protective mucous around Luna's eyes.

He is routinely -- illegally -- petted. If it goes on too long, conservationists fear he will grow so tame that authorities will decide the best place for him is an aquarium.

"It's hard not to touch him. It's irresistible," says Gold River resident Mary Lou Hascarl, who nevertheless tries to shoo people away. "He's absolutely starving for attention. . . . It's just like feeding a fat dog. He loves it, but you know that it's wrong."

Fisherman Felix Harry says he's friendly enough with Luna that he thrusts his entire arm into the whale's mouth. Then he scratches Luna's tongue. The whale loves it.

Isn't Harry afraid?


		Scott Eklund / P-I
	Luna often will swim into the marina at Gold River and play with the boats that are tied to the dock. "It's hard not to touch him. It's irresistible," says Gold River resident Mary Lou Hascarl.

"No," he says. "He knows me."

Springer set example

Radar -- his real name is Glen Hammond -- pilots the Jervis Bay into the drizzle toward Victor Island, where he figures to find Luna. Twenty minutes pass. Half an hour. He's circled the island. No whale.

"Maybe he'll be back at the dock waiting for us, saying, 'Where were you guys?' " Pakenham says jauntily.

"No," Radar replies tersely. "More likely he'd follow us."

With no Luna anywhere in sight, Radar turns back.

Pakenham complains that Oceans and Fisheries Canada, his old department, has talked for months about convening this science panel to talk about Luna. So far, no meeting.

"This whale seems to have fallen off the radar screen. The longer he's isolated, the greater the risk is to the whale," says Pakenham, executive director of the Veins of Life Watershed Society, a Victoria-based environmental group.

Conservationists are pulling mightily for Luna to be reunited with his pod when it returns to Washington waters this summer.

"The less contact time with people the better," says Fred Felleman, a board member of the Seattle-based Orca Conservancy. "That's why we were trying to get something going last winter."

That was about the same time Springer turned up in the waters off Vashon Island.


		Scott Eklund / P-I
	Luna floats in the Nootka Sound near Gold River on Vancouver Island away from his pod, which returns each summer to the San Juan Islands.

But Springer, who also grew lonely and started making nice to boats and people, is a big success story. Known to scientists as A-73, she was captured under the auspices of U.S. officials and whisked back to a joyous reunion with her pod in Canada. She started getting friendly with boats again, but her cousins quickly dissuaded her.

Just as no one is quite sure how Springer strayed hundreds of miles, it's unclear how Luna found himself alone in Nootka Sound. His whale family -- dubbed the L Pod by scientists -- usually leaves Puget Sound in the winter and returns in the summer. In 2001, the Ls returned without Luna or an older male, his uncle.

Whale enthusiasts speculate that while the pod was foraging out near the Pacific, the uncle went inland and Luna followed, perhaps thinking he was getting a hunting lesson. Luna's uncle may well have grown sick and died, they believe.

Consider that orcas have life spans similar to those of humans. So this year-old calf was left alone, not terribly unlike a human infant suddenly isolated in the woods.

Fisheries officer Ed Thorburn says at first, Luna stayed alone in a bay about halfway up Nootka Sound, avoiding boats like a normal orca.

By about Christmas, though, Luna was coming close to boats. Then he was pushing around 30-foot logs for onlookers' entertainment, carrying twigs on his head, jumping out of the water next to boats and eventually pushing boats around with his nose. One unlucky kayaker was lifted far enough out of the water that she was trapped momentarily.

"I believe I can see a real loneliness in the way Luna looks at me," Thorburn says.

The Jervis Bay is nearly back to the docks when a dorsal fin slices through the water about 50 yards off the port side.

"Just wait," Radar says. "He'll be coming right to the door. Just let me know when he's underneath the hull." Radar wants to make sure not to hurt Luna.

Soon the 15-foot-long orca is bobbing boatside. He is lonely. He puts his head in easy petting distance, holds it there.

Radar hops up and runs to the stern. He pokes his head over the side to take a look. Incredibly, Luna lunges up perhaps 12 feet, grazing Radar's forehead. The grizzled sailor grabs his Southwestern-style storm hat, which Luna has knocked askew. He smiles broadly.


		Scott Eklund / P-I
	Glen "Radar" Hammond keeps a look out for Luna, the orca whale that was separated from his pod and is now by himself outside Gold River on Vancouver Island.

Pakenham looks at the whale. "We're going to get you out of here, Luna," he says.

'Biggest problem is people'

Maybe, maybe not.

In coming weeks, Fisheries and Oceans Canada's expert panel, which still is being assembled, will begin meeting to talk about Luna.

"His biggest problem right now is people," says John Ford, head of the government science team that monitors orcas.

The whole situation is really weird. Until the cases of Luna and Springer, marine mammal scientists in this part of the world hadn't seen a young orca separated from his pod for more than two decades.

Can anything be done? Should it?

"That's the real purpose of pulling together this scientific panel," says Marilyn Joyce, marine mammal coordinator for Fisheries and Oceans Canada. "What are the risks of leaving it there versus intervening and making some attempt to reintroduce the whale? What are the benefits?"

Canadian officials had hoped Luna's pod would return to Nootka Sound and be naturally reunited. But that's looking increasingly unlikely. The pod has never been seen in the waters far up Nootka Sound where Luna now hangs out.

Leaving Luna alone is not without risk. He could run afoul of a propeller. Already he frequently prevents boats from leaving the dock. Recently the whale has started approaching floatplanes on takeoff and landing. He has developed a keen interest in dockside dogs. And it's unclear that supplies of the fish Luna eats will always hold out.

On the other hand, moving an orca isn't something that's done easily. He could be hurt.

But conservationists say Luna is needed by his family. They point out that the Puget Sound orca population plummeted in the late 1990s for a variety of reasons after being battered in the '70s, when many young orcas were captured by aquariums.


		Scott Eklund / P-I
	Luna swims belly-side up in Nootka Sound.

These orcas slowly are being poisoned by industrial chemicals. Scientists have shown that the levels in their bodies have interfered with reproduction and other functions in seals, another marine mammal. Eliminating those industrial chemicals from the environment would cost untold billions. Moving Luna back to Puget Sound might cost hundreds of thousands.

Says Pakenham: "You have to ask: What is the value of having this whale as a solitary whale? Not much."

Joyce says the expert panel will include genetics experts who will consider the contribution Luna could make to keeping the orca population of Puget Sound viable.

"We want to look at it from a very objective point of view as to what's best for this whale and what's best for the pod," she says.

The Luna situation is different from Springer. For one thing, Springer was sick. Luna seems to be in fine health, as Pakenham sees this day from the deck of the Jervis Bay.

"Isn't this an amazing animal?" he squeals. "God, what a creature!"

The whale, seemingly answering, vocalizes in the weird little language of orcas, a sort of squeaking and whistling and clicking all melded together into something else.

Radar starts the boat. It's time to head back. As the vessel gets under way, Luna follows. It seems clear that when summer rolls around and vacation-loving hordes arrive, he quickly will be mobbed.

Last summer, M3 assigned a boat to guard against that. And government fisheries officers still are trying to keep folks away. For those found flagrantly violating the no-touching, no-swimming rules, "we will be seizing gear and charging individuals," fisheries officer Garth Sinclair warns.

But even his partner, Thorburn, acknowledges that fish cops can't be there all the time. They know the whale is steadily being tamed.

"It's like the bearded lady," says Hascarl. "He's become a curiosity and a lot of the respect has gone out of the window. It's easy to lose sight of this creature as being a wild killer whale and just see him as this little sideshow."

As the Jervis Bay reaches the dock, the sideshow starts anew. Luna has followed all the way -- incredibly, swimming upside down, partly to port and partly aft of the old boat, within a few feet of the propeller.

At the dock, Luna plants himself where passersby can see and pet him. Up walks Alberto Girotto, who works for the M/V Uchuck III, a coastal freighter that docks nearby.

Girotto bends down and looks at Luna.

"Hi, goofy," Girotto says. "You're back again, eh?"

Girotto says the Uchuck crew loves Luna and does its best to keep folks away.

"We don't want to touch him," Girotto says, "because we don't want to be the people who slowly but surely put him in an aquarium."

P-I reporter Robert McClure can be reached at 206-448-8092 or robertmcclure@seattlepi.com

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