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Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Granny's Struggle: Ignorance, fear lead to a death by art
Ignorance, fear lead to a death by art
Part Two of Six (SeePart One)
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On land, the early decades of the 20th century were a time of ambition and promise.
On the water, they were a time of turbulence and mistrust.
Old fears and hatreds ruled the seas.
For centuries, humans had viewed orcas -- which are actually super-size dolphins -- as bloodthirsty beasts. They believed the predators would attack, kill and devour a man in an instant, like so much fish food.
Sailors told tales of Jonahs rotting away in the bellies of the gluttons with the menacing teeth. The Aleuts of Kodiak Island called orcas polossatik, "the feared ones." The Haidas of British Columbia called them skana, "killing demons." Some Northwest tribes held that orcas had supernatural powers, that they were sea-gods who captured canoes, dragged humans underwater and transformed them into killer whales.
Attitudes were rooted in eyewitness accounts of transient orcas, nomadic ocean-dwelling killer whales. The transients attacked gray whales, blue whales, porpoises, sea lions, seals, even great white sharks, often jumping on their prey and holding them down until they drowned. These cunning wolves of the sea hunted the open ocean in packs.
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| This mythologized orca (labeled "orcha") with tusks and dragonlike features attacks a baleen whale on a portion of the Carta Marina, a map of Scandinavia drawn by Olaus Magnus and first published in 1539. (JAMES FORD BELL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA) | ||
Worried 18th century Spanish sailors first dubbed the powerful predators "whale killers," a term eventually translated into "killer whales." The sailors had no idea that one orca could be different from another.
The differences were dramatic. The oceangoing whale-killers feed primarily on marine mammals: whales, porpoises, sea lions. The killer whale pods that inhabit the Salish Sea -- called resident orcas -- don't. They concentrate on fish.
Transients and resident orcas might share the same ancestry, share the same tuxedo coloration and imposing physique, even the same animal intelligence, but they are genetically distinct. They avoid one another, even when they swim the same seas.
They haven't interbred in thousands of years.
Bullets didn't make such distinctions in the first half of the century. Whalers shot at the whale-eaters as freely as they shot at fish-eaters. So, for decades, did commercial fishermen. These "blackfish" were thieves, spoilers, defilers of human fortune. The salmon they snatched rightfully belonged to humans, not animals.
One commercial fisherman in the San Juan Islands said he knew when killer whales were coming through gill net fleets by the sounds of gunfire.
The state had no regulations on orca slaughters. It was the Wild West on the open seas. Even governments took aim. In 1939, Canada's armed services instructed pilot trainers to use the killer whales for target practice in Georgia Strait, shooting high-caliber bullets from airplanes.
"They could have easily wiped out an entire pod in an afternoon," said Rich Osborne, director of the Whale Museum in Friday Harbor.
If they did, no one was counting.
In the 1960s, when entrepreneurs began rounding up orcas to sell to marine parks, captors reported about 25 percent of the animals had scars from bullet wounds.
Did Granny see the dark holes blossom red on her relatives' sides?
Did she watch them flail and sink into the dark underworld?
Somehow, the canny female survived the humans who cursed at her, shot at her, their bullets whizzing by her bulbous head as she navigated an underwater maze of old linen fishnets, wall after wall, in search of food.
To humans, Granny and her family were a puzzle, vicious but alluring. They fascinated man in the way that all mythic beasts do, swimming in the dark corners of a psyche where apes become King Kong, Sasquatch snatches naughty children into dark forests and ripples in a turbulent lake describe the undulating backbone of the Loch Ness Monster.
This strange fascination would lead to one of the ugliest chapters in the history of Granny's family -- a death by art.
'He was in a daze'
No one knows how Moby Doll was related to Granny, but Canadian researchers linked the orca -- mistakenly identified as a female -- to J-Pod through his distinctive dialect, an old language of squeaking hinges and high-octave bleats carried generation to generation.
By the time Moby Doll's story hit front-page headlines around the world, Granny was already in her early 50s, a respected leader in her J-Pod tribe.
Was she swimming with Moby Doll that summer day in 1964 when an artist took aim?
It was the middle of July, and Samuel Burich, a sculptor and commercial fisherman, had been waiting more than 50 days for the right opportunity. Burich was under commission from the Vancouver Aquarium to create a scale-size, lifelike reproduction of an orca for its new hall. The artist wanted accurate measurements. He needed a model -- dead.
He was having a rotten time of it. Most of his crew had given up, gone home after seven weeks of waiting. The only two hunters left were Burich and fellow fisherman Joe Bauer. "We were about to pack it in, too," said Bauer, now 68.
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| This 1883 Haida drawing by Johnny Kit Elswa depicts Skana the "killer." The Haidas called orcas skana, "killing demons." (BEINECKE RARE BOOK AND MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY, YALE UNIVERSITY) | ||
They got lucky that July morning. Bauer remembers getting up, "a little hung over," looking out, and seeing a dozen or so whales approaching. "I yelled 'Hey, Sam! There's whales right in front of the gun site.' "
The site was a ledge that hung about 25 feet above the water on the island's east end. Bauer was armed with a camera, Burich with a musket-loaded harpoon gun. The sculptor drew a bead on the young male orca, his finger tightening on the gun's trigger.
Then he fired. The steel harpoon pierced Moby Doll side-to-side, bruising one of the bones in the back of his skull. The stunned orca appeared to be in shock. "He was in a daze," Bauer said.
Two killer whales from Moby Doll's clan pushed the motionless animal to the surface so he wouldn't drown. Was one of them Granny?
If she was there, she would have heard her young relative's distressed squeals as the shock wore off and the pain hit. She would have also seen the artist trying to finish off the job.
Burich kept shooting at his black-and-white prey with a rifle. The island lighthouse keeper and others joined in. The young orca wouldn't die.
It felt all wrong to Bauer. He'd been surprised to see the orcas trying to save the bull, surprised to hear their calls. "I had this feeling we had a lot more there than we had bargained for."
Suddenly he knew he had to stop the bullets. Quickly maneuvering his rowboat between the firing squad and the wounded bull, he made himself a human shield for Moby Doll. "The men kept yelling, 'You're going to get yourself killed. They're ferocious!' " said the retired fisherman. "I didn't think so. I didn't think I was in danger."
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| Murray Newman, Vancouver Aquarium's founding director, feeds a fish to Moby Doll at a net pen near Jericho Beach. One of the first killer whales to be exhibited anywhere, Moby Doll lived in the pen for 86 days before dying. His obituary made front-page headlines. | ||
The men finally called the director of the Vancouver Aquarium to tell them they had an orca specimen -- alive. The director advised them to try to save the wounded animal.
It took some 16 hours to bring the young bull into Vancouver's harbor, still tethered to the harpoon. Once inside the harbor, the orca was put in a 40-by-60-foot sea pen and pumped full of penicillin. Scientists assumed he was female, and kids in a radio contest named him "Moby Doll." Many also assumed the black-and-white behemoth would attack them, tear them to pieces, given half an opportunity.
At first, he refused to eat, circling the pen in a counterclockwise motion, like a tiger in a tight cage.
When he finally began to eat after 55 days in captivity, he took the fish gently from the humans, careful not to hurt them, despite everything they'd done to him.
Unbelievably, Granny's young wounded relative was docile, trainable, even friendly. He was not a bloodthirsty monster. And he was not dumb, as scientists who studied his complex vocalizations concluded.
In a short time, the young orca became a star, a flippered celebrity adored by a newly smitten public.
Fans would soon be heartbroken. After only three months in captivity, Moby Doll -- who when autopsied turned out to be Moby Dick -- died of an infection.
Mourning for Granny's relative, one of the first killer whales exhibited in captivity, was heard around the world. His obituary made front-page headlines in Europe.
Was there an inkling then of the bizarre twist the orca story would take?
"Our experience with Moby Doll had allowed us to make great strides in understanding marine mammals," wrote the aquarium director, Murray Newman, in an autobiography.
"But at the same time, we had unwittingly opened the way to a new kind of commercialism."
Soon, Granny would be tangled up inside it.
MONDAY: Part 1
Survival perfected by years spent navigating a changing seaCOMING WEDNESDAY: Part 3
Granny's family dwindles before her eyes.
M.L. Lyke can be reached at marylynn@wavecable.com.
What are your thoughts on promises to clean up Puget Sound and save local orcas?
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Part One:
Over some 90 years, Granny has dodged bullets, escaped captors' nets. Can she survive the contamination of her home -- and her body?
Part Two:
A young Granny grows from infant to mature female in a sea increasingly dirtied with human waste and poisoned with chemicals. To humans, she's a monster, a curse -- and, soon enough, a swimming target.
Part Three:
Granny has escaped the bullets of fishermen and the military, but she and her family aren't so lucky when the nets of fortune-hunters close around them.
Part Four:
Granny escapes the nets of captors, but she can't escape a world in change. Her seas grow noisy, crowded with boats -- and young relatives are dying.
Part Five:
Granny must adapt to a world that's noisy and crowded, an underwater New York City where orca mothers pass along human poisons to "crack babies." The world up top is as strange. The same humans who once feared her now revere her.
Part Six:
Granny is tough. She has dodged nets and bullets. She has swum in our garbage and pollutants for nine decades and survived. What she can't survive is a sea without prey.
All about orcas
A primer.
Part One:
Marine life is disappearing from Puget Sound, and fast
The causes are many: Politicians' broken promises, industries' resistance and the inability to convince people to live and work more gently on the shores of the Sound.
Although some species thrive, the feast is actually a famine
Shrimp and spot prawn appear to be thriving -- which may represent a serious imbalance in the Puget Sound ecosystem.
Some businesses find flouting laws is cost-effective
Environmental agencies are hamstrung by businesses that repeatedly fail to follow the rules.
In the battle between fish and farmers, orcas are the losers
The Skagit River is the classic example of how much people resist changes that are necessary to rescue the sound's sea life.
Part Two:
A rising tide of chemicals and sewage
Despite years of cleanups, bans on certain chemicals and increasingly stringent regulations, pollution in Puget Sound remains pervasive. Fish are bathing in microscopic bits of plastic, toxic chemicals, pharmaceuticals and caffeine.
The message in the (plastic) bottle is dire
A lot of the plastics -- bottles, bags, toys, packaging, etc. -- that we use are winding up in marine waters. It's a newly emerging threat to sea life as the items break down and make their way into the food chain.
Septic tanks suspected in threat to nation's manila clam harvest
Leaky septic systems are oozing sewage into marine waters and making shellfish unsafe for eating. But in many cases health inspectors can't get onto private property to pinpoint the culprits.
Part Three:
Toxic stormwater is one of the Sound's biggest threats
For years, government officials and scientists have known that polluted stormwater poses one of the greatest threats to the Sound. And they know how to fix it. But so far, no one has had the political nerve or money to match the threat.
Low-impact methods have high impact on ecosystems
Grassy ditches, rain barrels and green roofs are all innovations to close the tap on stormwater and can help save salmon and orcas.
Part Four:
Major oil spill presents greatest short-term threat to orcas' survival
Government scientists say a major oil spill is the biggest extinction threat for Puget Sound orcas over the next half-century. Even smaller spills irritate orcas' eyes and skin, and contaminate their prey.
An ounce of prevention won't clean up even a gallon of oil, activist warns
A gadfly has a warning about the preparedness for cleaning up a massive oil spill in Puget Sound.
Part Five:
Slaughtered orcas' DNA a chance to save the species
Odds are good that your grandkids -- or maybe even your kids -- could see the Sound's orca population shrink perilously low in their lifetime. The government has launched protections to save the orcas, declaring most of the Sound protected.
Saving Puget Sound could cost $12 billion
The cost of saving Puget Sound could exceed $12 billion and will require a holistic strategy that tackles the problems plaguing the entire marine ecosystem, according to an all-star advisory panel appointed by the governor.
Part Six:
Puget Sound is in trouble, but many still don't get it
The Sound is still in trouble and people still aren't getting it. Restoration advocates agree that getting the public onboard is key for raising needed funding and stanching the flow from the "death by a thousand cuts" sickening the Sound.
What the readers are saying ...
"The Sound of Broken Promises" readers were troubled to learn about the plight of Puget Sound and conflicted over who's to blame and what to do next, according to the dozens of comments logged on the P-I Web site.
Track the latest environmental news on Lisa Stiffler and Robert McClure's Dateline Earth.
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