Puget Sound— an area that was renamed the Salish Sea in 2009 to honor the area’s origins and future.
THE ORCA’S FIERCE reputation was well earned.
What Burich and Bauer didn’t know, what no one knew, was something else Bigg would discover—that there are multiple types of killer whales, which are so distinct that it is likely that, if they survive long enough, they will one day be considered different species. The different kinds of killer whales—known as ecotypes—don’t look exactly the same, and although they are capable of breeding with each other, and have mated when forced together in marine parks, there is no evidence that they have bred with each other in the wild in more than 700,000 years. The mammal-eating orcas that Bigg dubbed transients are as different from the fish-eating whales he called residents as lions are from house cats. Not only do residents and transients have different feeding and hunting habits, but they also have different languages, rules, and rituals. When the two types of whales meet in the wild, the transients tend to steer clear of the residents.
Thanks to aquariums where orcas serve time as star attractions, and movies like Free Willy, loveable, chatty resident whales with their close-knit families and seafood diet have captured the global imagination and become the default image not just for orcas but for every whale from belugas to blues. Resident killer whales travel and hunt in close-knit family groups, constantly communicate, and feed on specific types of fish, determined by the part of the world they live in. Studies of dead residents have revealed that their diets are so specialized that when they’re living in the wild, they will almost never deviate from it, even if the alternative is starvation. On the west coast of North America there are two groups of residents— the northerns, who roam between southeast Alaska and southern Vancouver Island, and the southerns, who live along the rest of Vancouver Island, including the waters near Saturna. These whales travel all the way down to California.
The orcas who earned killer whales their reputations as monsters were the transients, which scientists now refer to as Bigg’s whales. Bigg’s whales are less social, less chatty, and less picky about their food. These whales are larger, with sharper dorsal fins. They hunt in packs like wolves—the mammal they have often been compared with by anyone who has seen them hunt.
Humans watching killer whales over the years were convinced that these whales enjoy hunting, since they’ll catch a favorite menu item, like a seal, and flip it into the air to kill it. They’ve also been known to allow their prey to escape before catching it again. These are probably older whales training their children, but regardless of their reasons, the methods earned killer whales a reputation for methodically tracking their prey and also for tormenting it—as if they’re playing with their food. After stalking seals and sea lions and punting them into the air until they’re dead, they peel the skin off their prey and discard it as if they’re snacking on bananas. And their prey includes much larger whales—like minkes, grays, and humpbacks. They are also known to eat other animals that have wandered into or near the water—including birds and moose.
Old Tom and his clan were Australian mammal eaters. When the orcas take down another whale, it’s a savage kill, the stuff of nightmares, even for seasoned whalers. This isn’t legend; it’s reality. Orcas are the ocean’s apex predator. There may be no reason for humans to be afraid of transient killer whales—since they rarely attack anything they’re not planning to eat—but to any creature that’s part of their diet, they are the ultimate black and white horror movie, the destroyer of worlds, death. And since they eat the largest animals on earth, why wouldn’t these unstoppable killing machines feast on human flesh?
There are a few theories about why orcas don’t attack humans in the wild, but they generally come down to the idea that orcas are fussy eaters and only tend to sample what their mothers teach them is safe. Since humans would never have qualified as a reliable food source, our species was never sampled.
So why wouldn’t they mistake us for food if we fell into the water?
Because they don’t rely on their sight.
A shark will take a bite of a surfer and then spit it out because, apparently, we’re not as tasty as fish and seals. But orcas use echolocation to lock in on their prey. If a human disguised himself as a sea lion, the whale would know that the idiot in the sea lion suit isn’t part of a balanced breakfast.
Another possible explanation is that, unlike our species, orcas would never harm another creature they consider intelligent. Even though Bigg’s whales eat other whales and don’t mix with residents, the mammal-eating orcas don’t harm their pescatarian, pacifist cousins.
Because of Bigg’s work, scientists and whale watchers now know almost every orca in the Salish Sea on sight. His research led to the southern residents being placed on the endangered species list in Canada in 2001 and in the U.S. in 2005. Today, the southern residents are considered one of the most endangered populations of any species on the planet.
In 2015, the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service declared the southern resident killer whales one of the eight most endangered marine populations in America, and they are the only officially endangered orca population in the world. At the start of spring 2016, after a year that saw the biggest baby boom since the 1970s, there were only eighty-three southern residents in the Salish Sea. But in 1964, the belief was that there were too many killer whales, they were ferocious, and, at best, they were a pest that should be eradicated.
The young whale drowning off the coast of Saturna was a southern resident, which meant the only item on its menu was Chinook salmon.
IN 1964, IT was the salmon diet that had earned killer whales their designation as public enemy number one. A half dozen years earlier, there may have been enough salmon in British Columbia for whales, but there weren’t enough to satisfy humans. Fishermen blamed the killer whales, which were swimming beyond their usual hunting grounds in search of sustenance. Industry leaders demanded that the government step in to solve the whale problem.
Proposals from government officials included arming the coast guard with explosive bullets, bazookas, dynamite, depth charges, and mortars. One plan called for boats to herd the killers into shallow waters so that the air force could bomb the pods. One Canadian fisheries officer suggested using a baited line to entice whales to come close enough to harpoon. He was certain that if the harpoon failed to finish off the beast, the other members of the pod would do the job, saying, “There would seem little doubt that the cannibalistic traits of the rest of the shoal, if left alone, would soon put the finishing touches on him.” The fishermen believed that the whales were like sharks and that blood—even from their own kind—would ignite a feeding frenzy.
Finally, the Department of Fisheries settled on a more civilized solution than explosives. In June 1961, a fifty-caliber machine gun was mounted on the Vancouver Island side of Seymour Narrows to kill the whales. Seymour Narrows is roughly 140 miles away from Saturna.
The gun was never fired, but not because anyone protested. It was a dry, hot summer, and there were fears a stray bullet might spark a forest fire. Also, once the gun was mounted, the killers steered clear of Quadra, just as they stayed away from Saturna after the aquarium’s hunters arrived. In 1962, the salmon stocks returned and the fishermen assumed their competitors had already been culled.
The morning of July 16, 1964, the killer whales off the coast of Saturna were using their acute acoustic senses to track salmon. From April to October each year, the whales swim more than seventy-five miles a day and can travel at up to twenty miles per hour as they stalk Chinook, which regularly cozy up close to the shores of Saturna.
On a good day, an adult killer whale eats up to three hundred pounds of salmon.
On a bad day, there are no salmon and the whales don’t eat.
On
