The Yukon Harbor orca capture operation was the first planned, deliberate trapping of a large group of orcas (killer whales). 15 southern resident orcas were trapped by Ted Griffin and his Seattle Public Aquarium party on 15 February 1967, in Yukon Harbor on the west side of Puget Sound.[1]The first four orcas that had been taken into captivity had been captured singly, and mostly opportunistically. Those four were named Wanda, Moby Doll, Namu, and Shamu—who was then the only surviving one.[2] Through them, interest in orcas had escalated.
The Yukon Harbor operation initiated the "peak cropping years" of the orca capture era in the Salish Sea, when large numbers of resident orcas were captured for sale.[3] This occurred just at the time when the global whaling industry was beginning to become problematic in its viability and in social history.
By 1967, there had been a score of attempts to capture orcas by various organizations. All of the deliberate attempts had failed, except for Ted Griffin's capture of Shamu. Many of the capture attempts had resulted in the deaths of orcas. Griffin's 1967 project was born of experiential knowledge combined with the geographical advantages of Puget Sound. His wealth of experiences led to preparations of unique equipment and methods in order to realize the deliberate capture of multiple orcas.[4][5] Nonetheless, the operation would be plagued with difficulties and vicissitudes. In particular, herding and corralling the orcas for transfer from Yukon Harbor, where 15 were trapped, to the aquarium in Seattle proved to be a long and dramatic, 17-day process, reported daily in The Seattle Times.
5 young southern resident orcas were taken into captivity. 3 of them were infants, 11-foot (3.4 m) or less. The names eventually given to the five were Kilroy, Ramu, Katy, Kandu, and Walter the Whale—later renamed Skana. The death toll was 3 orcas, Griffin's highest besides that of the 1970 Penn Cove operation. 2 orcas managed to escape from the capture nets. They were thought to be the mothers of lost calves. The remaining 5 orcas were released at the end of the operation.[6][7][8]
1967 historical background
Legal situation of orcas
In the US, the
cetaceans, however, was left to the IWC (International Whaling Commission). To be sure, as a species the orca was not endangered. It was also considered a dangerous pest. It preyed on fish, seals, and whales, all of which were seen as valuable resources for humans.[10]
Whaling in the Pacific Northwest
"Whale stocks were crashing," leading to "the IWC's banning of the harvest of humpbacks and blue whales in the North Pacific."[11] Whaling in British Columbia waters was becoming unprofitable because of low whale numbers, and competition from other products in the oil, meal, and meat markets. The province's only whaling company, the Western Canada Whaling Co., "was half owned by B.C. Packers Ltd. and half by Taiyo Gyogyo Fishing Co. of Japan, the largest fishing company in the world."[12] It operated out of Coal Harbour on northwest Vancouver Island. Its fleet's range was limited to 200 miles (320 kilometres), because it did not have the factory ships that allowed the Russian and Japanese fleets to operate far from their base, going "wherever the schools are most numerous." The B.C. whaling fleet's "total catch of all species" was 651 in 1966, and 496 in 1967. "The sei catch showed the heaviest decline" that year, from 350 to 89. The other species caught were 304 sperm and 103 fin whales.[13] The Coal Harbour whaling station closed after this "disappointing harvest."[11]
Harming whales was beginning to become more controversial in North America. Just a week before the Yukon Harbor capture operation, the death in
Newfoundland of a trapped fin whale called Moby Joe was lamented by Farley Mowat.[14] The incident would be the subject of his 1972 book A Whale for the Killing,[15] which would be inspirational for Greenpeace activist and orca scientist Paul Spong, whose life would be deeply affected by his relationship with Skana, who was captured in Yukon Harbor.[16]
Namu's legacy
Following the death of Namu, Shamu was the only remaining orca in captivity.[2] Namu had made Ted Griffin a local hero, as exemplified in a summary in The Seattle Times: "Namu lived in captivity about a year, after being towed from the British Columbia wilderness in a daring expedition that caught the attention of the world. Griffin managed to tame Namu to the point where the big killer whale permitted his owner to ride him bareback and performed several tricks. Shortly before he died, Namu was featured in a Hollywood motion picture."[17]
He had also put Griffin into debt.
necropsy actually evidenced that he had been ill with an "acute bacterial infection, likely contracted from sewage runoff in Elliott Bay" where Griffin had moved him.[19]
Nevertheless, thousands of local fans wanted Griffin to get another orca.[20][21] Aquariums all over the world also wanted Griffin to capture an orca for them.[22] His most immediate orders would come from SeaWorld San Diego, and Portland, Oregon Boat Show producer Bob O'Loughlin,[23] who had tried to capture orcas at Seattle even before the captivity of Moby Doll in 1964.[24]
Namu, Inc.
Demand for captive orcas was not lacking, but supply was very problematic. Out of a score of deliberate capture attempts up until then, only the one which had caught Shamu had been successful. And a regular hazard of attempting to collect for aquariums was the death of animals. It appeared, however, that if anyone could catch an orca, it was Ted Griffin. "Namu, Inc., initially founded to control marketing and merchandising for the world's only captive orca, became the whale-catching arm of the Seattle Marine Aquarium" which he owned.[4]
Griffin's preparations
The project
In the late summer of 1966, Ted Griffin was planning not only to find a replacement for Namu at his Seattle Public Aquarium, but also to fill orders from other enterprises. Few, if any, other humans had spent as much time observing and obsessively chasing orcas. Many years of experience had left him painfully aware of how difficult it was to catch an orca alive. It had been done deliberately only once—by himself.[25]
Yet during the fall salmon run when
Tacoma waters "teemed with the huge mammals" which "romped to the delight of shoreline spectators," Griffin himself did not appear to be interested in catching an orca at that time. To be sure, Tacoma Park District officials, who had investigated "the feasibility of a killer whale for Tacoma," decided that "pens and whale food are too expensive." Seattle Marine Aquarium director Don Goldsberry, Griffin's assistant and a Tacoma native, said that the aquarium preferred to "wait until the spring to avoid the high cost of winter upkeep," even though during the fall salmon run was "the best time of year to hunt" the mammals. He also hinted at the aquarium's planning, saying, "We don't have enough equipment. Most of our gear soon will be coming in from the East."[26][27]
Equipment
The essential issue was always that for the operation to be successful, the orcas had to stay alive. It was not like whaling, hunting, or fishing. Intriguingly, the orcas were spooked by nets, in spite of their agility. Because they had to surface to breathe, they drowned if they became entangled underwater.[28]
The plan was to surround them with an unusually large
purse seine. Instead, it would be anchored to the seafloor in a shallow bay. Furthermore, the light nylon mesh was supposed to tear if the orcas collided with it. An ongoing problem was the big tides and heavy currents of the Puget Sound area, which could cause the netting to shift. At least three times previously, that had led to escapes.[28]
Keeping track of the orcas when chasing them was another difficulty. They could dive into underwater darkness and give no indication of their underwater direction. The solution to this came via a
Greener harpoon gun
.
This rifle was suggested and lent to Ted Griffin by the Marine Mammal Biological Laboratory,[5] a little-known section of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. "Located on the Sand Point Naval Air Station near the University of Washington, the lab was the only facility in North America devoted exclusively to the study of marine mammals. But its research focused on their commercial use. The lab’s primary mandate was managing the northern fur seal population, which migrated annually to the rookeries on Alaska’s Pribilof Islands...Funded largely by the seal hunt, the lab’s researchers supervised the annual slaughter of nearly eighty thousand animals, whose hides and meat came to Seattle for processing."[24]
Their theory behind Griffin's potential use of the Greener rifle was that the harpoon it fired would be too light to penetrate the blubber of a large orca and cause serious injury. Griffin would use it to attach a line with buoys to a orca. As the local orcas always stuck together in large pods, the buoys trailing behind a harpooned individual would make it possible to track a number of them.[5]
Crucially, to enable Griffin to spot and fire upon the fast and elusive animals, he had aircraft available "supplied by Lake Union Air Service and Seattle Helicopter Airways."[17]
Location
Puget Sound, with all its islands, narrow waterways and shallow bays, was ideal for spotting and trapping orcas, which came as far south as Olympia.[29] To initially find the orcas, Ted Griffin created a spotting network and appealed to the public for information, saying that the aquarium would accept collect calls with sightings.[17]
Southern residents hunted
At the start of 1967, Ted Griffin, director of the Seattle Public Aquarium on Pier 56, began actively searching for a replacement for Namu, who had died the previous July. He said, "The hottest area for killer whales at present would be the channel between Possession Point [on
On Saturday January 28, a call to The Seattle Times from a woman who spotted the orcas between nearby
Vashon Island set off a hunt by Griffin's party. They picked up the orcas off Point Robinson in the afternoon, and followed them all night, but on the Sunday, in a winter storm with 70 mile-an-hour (113 kph) gusts, they lost them. On Monday morning, "they received a call from the Fauntleroy Ferry Terminal that the whales had been sighted again." They "went after them," then definitively lost them near the Agate Pass Bridge.[30]
Yukon Harbor capture
The trap
Ted Griffin had lost track of the southern resident orcas in January, but on February 14 he was notified "by the Coast Guard that killer whales had been spotted at Port Angeles, Washington, headed" towards Puget Sound. When they were sighted there on the 15th, he boarded a helicopter, carrying the Greener harpoon rifle with buoys attached to the line.[1]
"Griffin's opportunity came when a female and her calf surfaced beneath the helicopter, prompting an adult male to push them back underwater. 'Did you see that?' Griffin yelled to the pilot. 'He's protecting them!' The aquarium owner then fired his harpoon into the bull's right flank." In the following hours, his team on the water "used the three trailing buoys to track the pod."[1]