The Killer Whale Who Changed the World. Mark Leiren-Young
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place on the planet than the northeast tip of Saturna Island, known as East Point. For as long as anyone can remember, orcas have gathered year round off Canada’s southernmost Gulf Island, not far from the edge of the imaginary line in the Pacific Ocean that has marked the Canada-U.S. border since 1872.
In 1964, most of the hundred or so inhabitants of this small hilly island lived on the other side, roughly fifty miles away, near the ferry terminal at Lyall Harbour. The only connection between East Point and the rest of Saturna was a rugged dirt road. Almost no one lived here except the two lighthouse keepers and their families and the past lighthouse keeper and his wife, who’d recently built themselves a small retirement home.
Beyond the cliff, just before the notorious Boiling Reef, which was the reason for the lighthouse, there was a thirty-seven-fathom drop. In addition to being a hazard to boaters, the reef is a resting area for the roaring Steller (or northern) sea lions, which can grow more than ten feet long and weigh more than 2,500 pounds. Steller babies—and the seals that share their resting spot—are a favorite food of transient killer whales.
The lighthouse—really more of a light tower—with the houses nearby, was surrounded by lush green grass that looked like perfect grazing territory for the island’s wild sheep. In the spring of 1964, Sun writer Jack Scott said that the grass was blanketed with flaming orange California poppies. He described the whaler’s campground as “so theatrical in appearance . . . as looking like a bad set for an improbable movie.”
Saturna was “discovered”—as white folks used to say—in 1791, when a legendary Spanish schooner, the Santa Saturnina (believed to be the first European vessel constructed in North America), was exploring and charting the Gulf Islands. In 1869, the first British settler, Peter Frazier, set up a homestead, paying the Crown one pound per acre. The Salish knew the island as Tekteksen, which means “long nose”—a reference to the shape of East Point.
On May 20, the aquarium’s intrepid team arrived at the long nose in boats and floatplanes. The men were starting to get their bearings when Vince Penfold spotted a pod of killer whales arriving to greet them. It was 6 AM, and it looked like their adventure might be over before breakfast.
This wasn’t a big surprise; the hunt was expected to take less than a week. The whalers raced to the bluff, but the whales were gone before Sparrow’s gun could be mounted. Although they never got to take their shot, everyone was thrilled. The whales were here.
Pete Fletcher knew the best place to set the harpoon—on the sandstone platform he and June called “the water sample rock.” Every day, one of them stepped onto the stone at the edge of the water and dipped a cedar pole with a thermometer and collection bottle attached into the ocean to check temperature and salinity. Samples were sent to the Department of Fisheries, where scientists hoped to learn more about the habits of the salmon stocks that frequented these waters. While the Fletchers collected their samples, they’d often see killer whales surfacing, sometimes almost too close for comfort.
Sparrow and his crew covered the rock with a thick wooden plank and attached the harpoon gun. The recoil from a few early test rounds confirmed that it needed to be secured more carefully. The men collected large stones to weigh down the platform, and then anchored it with a series of chains. The harpoon had the same effect as it had on Sparrow’s boat. No whales appeared. During the four previous summers, there had never been a week without a whale sighting. The aquarium had a chance at landing their whale a few hours after arriving, but the hours became days, then weeks.
While everyone was waiting to catch their specimen, the captain of the Chilco Post used a hydrophone to collect the strange sounds of the killers that weren’t venturing close enough to be shot. The coast guard was experimenting with audio recordings in the hope that playing the apex predator’s cries would frighten the sea lions away from valuable salmon.
One afternoon, the Post pulled close enough to the camp to share the recordings over a loudspeaker. Everyone was startled by the symmetry and rhythm of the squeaks and squeals. There were patterns that sounded like calls and responses, an almost musical structure that seemed less like random noise than language. Could these creatures be communicating with each other? Perhaps that first whale the men had hoped to harpoon had spread the word about the island’s dangerous new visitors.
While they waited for their prey, Sparrow trained Burich to load and fire the harpoon. The two practiced by shooting at a raft towed by the Post, but they missed their mark more often than they hit it. Finally, a pod of whales appeared. Burich raced to the harpoon, picked his victim, lined up the shot, fired, and watched as the steel spike and nylon tail whistled over the killer’s back.
The would-be model responded with a leap and a dive. Then the pod swam off, toward a part of the ocean where they wouldn’t be disturbed. When Canada’s fisheries minister, James Sinclair, arrived to survey the operation and watched the whalers practice shooting, he left the island convinced they’d never hook a whale.
On June 2, Scott’s column in the Sun described the scene: “Our intrepid leader here is Dr. Murray A. Newman. It frightens me to think what will happen to Murray if the hunt fails. I see him as an old, old geezer, roaming the oceans of the world, cursing and shaking his gnarled fist at the empty waves. The way things are going, I may be right there with him. Whale hunting gets in your blood, I tell you, especially when you don’t get any.” Newman and Scott both mused that perhaps these whales had a sixth sense that alerted them to danger.
Only one whale ventured so close to the harpoon gun that it would have been almost impossible to miss—a jet-black minke who seemed fascinated by the hunting party. But minkes weren’t killer whales—nor were they known as killers. They were, however, killer whale food. “We call her ‘Minnie,’” wrote Scott. “It’s a safe bet that no one has ever been this affectionate toward Orcinus orca.” The whalers had a pet whale.
A few days after Scott’s column was published, Sparrow had smaller fish to fry. He couldn’t afford to miss halibut season and left the Gulf Islands to head out for the Bering Sea. Burich would now be the executioner. Newman and Penfold left too, along with the rest of the aquarium staff and the media. Newman recruited one of the aquarium’s original volunteers, Joe Bauer, to work with Burich.
Bauer had been fishing since his childhood—first in Germany, which his family had made the mistake of visiting just as World War II broke out, leading to his father’s internment at Dachau because of his anti-Nazi sentiments; then at a refugee camp in Scotland, where an old Gaelic fisherman taught him how to fish for herring; and later in Canada, where he studied fishing and net-making with First Nations fishermen. “I used to fish oolichans [candlefish] and was mentored by the Musqueam, the Stó:lō, and Tsawwassen bands,” says Bauer. “They taught me a lot about respecting nature and working with nature rather than trying to dictate and control it.” He was also taught to honor elders, offering them the pick of every catch. As a result of his respect for these traditions, as an adult Bauer was formally adopted by a Nisga’a family and received full First Nations status—including fishing rights—which he never used.
As a high school student in Steveston, a fishing and canning town just outside of Vancouver, Bauer collected exotic local fish for himself, then for the small aquarium run by UBC. His personal collection was almost as impressive as the university’s; he had thirty tanks at home. “I had species UBC didn’t even know existed,” he says. UBC professor Dr. Wilbert Clemens was so impressed by the self-taught prodigy that Bauer became an aquarium fixture before there was an aquarium and was declared a lifetime member in 1956, while he was still in high school. Unable to afford university, Bauer worked as a fisherman but spent his spare time volunteering for Clemens and, later, Newman.
When the whaling expedition launched, the twenty-five-year-old Bauer was a diver and diving instructor (students included future Canadian environmental icon David Suzuki) and regularly helped the Canadian coast guard on rescue missions.
Bauer arrived on Saturna to search for other species for the aquarium and assist with the expedition, if necessary. He also brought a camera to chronicle the adventures. He knew Sparrow and Burich because they’d crossed paths as fishermen. It might be a big ocean, but it was