The Killer Whale Who Changed the World. Mark Leiren-Young
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and expired.
According to the Marineland report, the dead whale weighed just under twenty thousand pounds and was more than seventeen feet long. This seems unlikely, since that would make Wanda the heaviest female orca ever reported—but she was clearly a big whale.
That same morning, pathologists from the Los Angeles County Livestock Department performed a necropsy and determined that Wanda had died of acute gastroenteritis and pneumonia. They also found signs of advanced atherosclerosis and concluded that the stress of the capture and confinement probably contributed to her death. Their report also noted that Wanda’s brain weighed almost ten pounds and was very highly developed.
Brocato’s recollection of Wanda’s demise was more dramatic. “She went crazy,” he told reporters. “She started swimming at high speed around the tank, striking her body repeatedly.” After less than forty-eight hours, the world’s first captive killer whale was dead. But catching a killer whale no longer seemed impossible. The Franks knew they could net another one, and this time they’d find a healthy orca, ideally a juvenile—a whale that could grow up in captivity, a whale they could train to do tricks.
On their first attempt at killer whale hunting, they almost landed a baby. The Franks spotted a calf, roped it, and were ready to reel in their catch when the other members of the pod turned to face them and lined up side by side in what the hunters believed was a military-style attack formation. Rather than risk being charged by an orca army, they set their captive free.
The next time they were ready. They had the gear to catch a whale—and the weapons to protect themselves. They outfitted the Geronimo for a trip up the Pacific and arrived off the coast of Vancouver in the summer of 1962. Brocato still had his sights set on a juvenile, but just in case an angry mother or killer whale army attacked, he’d packed a “high powered cannon.” Local experts, including Vancouver Aquarium director Dr. Murray Newman, were convinced the whale hunters from Hollywood were risking their lives.
Brocato and Calandrino picked Point Roberts, Washington—a small fishing community just on the U.S. side of the border, roughly fifteen nautical miles away from Saturna Island—as their ideal hunting grounds. The whales might not recognize the imaginary line in the water indicating the international boundary, but Canadian officials would, so the Americans were going to catch a killer on their side of the border to avoid becoming entangled in any political nets.
On September 16, after two months of searching for their prey, the whalers spotted what they believed was a female killer chasing a porpoise. Brocato told Calandrino to watch the porpoise and treat it like bait. The porpoise saw the boat and decided to treat it like an escape route. As the whales focused on the porpoise, Calandrino easily roped his killer—just like he’d caught dozens of dolphins.
But the whale cut underneath the boat, wrapped the 250-foot line around the propeller and then surfaced 200 feet away. “As it emitted shrill shrieks a bull orca rose alongside it—both rushed The Geronimo, striking it with their flanks.” At least that was how the hunters reported the incident. Whether the whales struck the boat or whether they were chasing the porpoise and the waves rocked the boat and spooked the men, the result was the same. Fearing for his life, Brocato took out his .357 Magnum rifle and pumped ten bullets into the female and one into the male. Moments later, the waters off Point Roberts were red with blood. The dead female killer was floating beside them; the male was gone. The great expedition was over. And the killer whale’s reputation as an unpredictable beast, ready and able to destroy anything in its domain, was not only intact but enhanced. The men who caught pilot whales told the world that the killer whales had almost killed them.
The Geronimo hauled the female’s corpse back to the American port town of Bellingham, where they weighed and measured their catch, which was reported as twenty-three feet long and more than 35,000 pounds (an extreme size estimate that also seems slightly fishy). Brocato kept the sharp teeth as souvenirs. The whale’s remains became dog food. The most experienced whale wranglers on the planet were finished chasing killers. They were far too dangerous to capture, and they were clearly impossible to exhibit.
CHAPTER TWO
SAVE THE WHALE
“More than any other denizen of the deep, Orcinus orca inspires an emotional response ranging from pure hatred (seamen react to them with the same intensity that shepherds react to cougars) to an unwitting thrill of admiration. In either case no one familiar with the killer whale’s savage potential has ever viewed that enormous tower of a dorsal fin, a triangle often six black, evil feet in height, without a tremor in the nether regions of their stomach.”
JACK SCOTT, VANCOUVER SUN, JUNE 4, 1964
THE SMALL KILLER whale being held aloft in the water off Saturna isn’t breathing, but the two larger whales holding it on the surface, waiting for a puff from their pod-mate’s blowhole, aren’t prepared to surrender. For killer whales, breathing is not an automatic act. If an orca is not conscious, it won’t inhale, and it needs to be on the surface to breathe. A killer can hold its breath underwater for about fifteen minutes—long enough to escape almost any attempt by a human to harass it—but an unconscious whale won’t live long. And if this whale regains its senses underwater and gasps for air, it may choke and drown before it can reach the surface. As shock sets in and consciousness fades, Burich’s victim is drowning. It is about five years old. That means one of the whales attempting to save it is probably its panicked mother or grandmother. The two larger whales consider their injured pod-mate. Is it already dead?
That doesn’t matter.
A mother orca in mourning may hold her dead calf above water for days and transport it for hundreds of miles.
The whales off Saturna know their companion isn’t dead. Killer whales can see about as well as humans. Anyone who has watched a killer and thought it was looking back at them from the water, or through the glass walls of an aquarium tank, was probably right. Killer whales see well enough to not just identify other creatures but to identify depictions of other creatures in paintings or photos. They can also recognize themselves in mirrors—a test used by scientists to determine self-awareness and intelligence.
But vision isn’t the most useful sense when you’re diving a hundred meters in murky water. Killer whales listen, using a sense called echolocation, which works like sonar technology. By emitting sound waves and tracking the echoes as they bounce off their targets, these whales can find and “see” anything in the water. As each of these two whales transmits a signal from the front of its head—the melon— they are able to sense the injured whale’s heart pounding, to listen to their baby choke as water seeps into its lungs.
Orcas can hear each other’s calls from more than ten miles away. Their senses are so acute that they can dive to the bottom of a pool to locate and retrieve an object half the size of a wedding ring. There’s a blind Marvel comics hero—Daredevil—whose hearing is enhanced like this, which makes him dangerous enough to defeat armies of ninjas. Orcas basically have the same superpower. They don’t just “see” objects; it’s possible they can echolocate what’s inside of them. There’s anecdotal evidence to suggest they can detect whether a female from our species is pregnant before the expectant mother can. So these whales know that their pod-mate’s organs are still functioning and that they won’t be for much longer. Orcas will work together to support and transport their injured mates for weeks at the risk of their own health.
People who have spent a lot of time around these whales suspect that they also have a sixth sense or, at the very least, an uncanny sense of timing. Ever since Burich and Bauer and the other men in their original hunting party arrived with their weapons, the whales have steered clear of their usual fishing grounds—a route they’ve probably been following for thousands of years. Maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe the salmon were somewhere else. And maybe it’s a coincidence that the killer whales only returned this morning, after the plan to harpoon them had been aborted, after the gun was supposed to be gone.
Veteran killer whale watchers and longtime researchers all have stories about