Watching Our Water Ways

UPDATE: Aug. 30, 2011

The world premiere of “The Whale” took place Aug. 20 in the Faroe Islands, where promoters hoped they could encourage changes in a long tradition of hunting pilot whales. Check out reports on “The Whale” website and a blog entry by Leah Lemieux, author of “Rekindling the Waters.”

U.S. openings of the film are scheduled for Sept. 9 at SIFF Cinema in Seattle and The Grand Cinema in Tacoma, followed by openings in New York, Los Angeles and Vancouver, B.C. See the film’s screenings page.
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It appears that the much-anticipated movie about Luna, the killer whale, will soon be released in Seattle, New York City and Washington, D.C., according to an e-mail from the filmmakers, Suzanne Chisholm, Mike Parfit, and David Parfit. A new trailer for “The Whale” (view below) was recently released.

Luna was a 2-year-old male orca who belonged to the Southern Resident community of whales that frequent the Salish Sea. He somehow became separated from his family and took up an isolated existence in Nootka Sound on the West Coast of Vancouver Island.

Suzanne Chisholm and Mike Parfit spent months filming Luna and eventually produced an independent film called “Saving Luna.” But they were unable to gain mass distribution for the award-winning film until actor-producer Ryan Reynolds took an interest.

From their e-mail:

“The Whale is a new film, narrated by Ryan Reynolds. Like the movie Saving Luna, it also tells the story of Luna. In some ways you could say that The Whale is based on Saving Luna, which won 25 awards from around the world. But has been completely re-edited, re-written, and newly narrated to make it clear and accessible to an international audience of all ages.

“Our executive producers, Ryan Reynolds, Scarlett Johansson, and Eric Desatnik, have given us terrific feedback and suggestions for how to streamline and improve the storytelling, and we have added a significant amount of new footage as well. But, to reassure those who love the original film, it has not been turned into something crassly Hollywood. The same basic creative team has been at the heart of the new movie, and we are very happy about how it has turned out.”

The release date and advance theaters have not yet been announced.

Mike wrote an article for the July-August issue of Smithsonian magazine explaining how the project would not have come together without new digital film technology.

I’ve written before about my coverage of Luna’s story for the Kitsap Sun — including a trip to Nootka Sound, where I met Suzanne and Mike. By the time I arrived, they had made real connections with the local residents of the area — largely, I think, because they did not impose themselves on others the way some people with video cameras will do.

I was chosen by the Canadian government to be the U.S. pool reporter for print media. I was given special access to cover the effort to capture Luna and return him to his family in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. A Water Ways entry on Aug. 10, 2010, updates the Luna film project and includes links to the stories I wrote.

One segment of the film (click here to view) talks about people’s desire to touch Luna, who would come alongside boats and docks and practically beg to be petted. My wife Sue, who had come with me to help out, loves animals of all kinds. A few times we were down on the docks in the evening when Luna swam up. I followed the government’s orders not to interact with Luna, who had already become “habituated” to humans, as they say. I also would not allow Sue to approach him, though it killed her to be so close and not get even closer.

“You need to stay back,” I told her. “I can see the stories now: ‘Reporter’s wife arrested for petting a whale, while he covers the story about people illegally petting the whale.’”

It was an unusual story, all the way around, and I look forward to the film version of “The Whale.” Developments can be followed on Facebook.

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Washington state lawmakers have approved legislation that strengthens the hand of the Washington Department of Ecology, as the agency continues to beef up the state’s oil-spill response capabilities. See reporter John Stang’s story in today’s Kitsap Sun.

Some of the specific requirements were stripped out of the original bill introduced back in January by Rep. Christine Rolfes, D-Bainbridge Island. You may wish to review my initial blog entry in Water Ways Jan. 13. In place of detailed requirements, Ecology was given a strong hand to decide what kinds of equipment are needed for each area of the state, including Puget Sound.

In that sense, Rolfes’ initial goals for the legislation remain in place:

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UPDATE, Jan. 23, 2010

I keep hearing rumors that some kind of lawsuit may be filed to address the captivity of the young killer whale named Morgan, who is being kept in an aquarium in the Netherlands. I’m continuing to ask questions about the role of the Dutch government and what kinds of permits are needed to keep, sell or trade the orca.

Here’s an e-mail I received from Wietse van der Werf of Orca Coalition:
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I woke up this morning listening to radio reporter Greg Allen’s story about Miami Seaquarium on National Public Radio. My competitive side immediately wondered how his story would fit in with my story about the Seaquarium, published in today’s Kitsap Sun.

The aquarium in Miami has been getting some local publicity lately after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted that weathered oil has a pretty good chance of catching the Loop Current and making it all the way to Miami’s Biscayne Bay on the eastern shore of Florida.

Greg Allen got a stronger quote than I from general manager Andrew Hertz: “We pull our water for our animals straight out of the bay. And we filter it and we give them clean water. But the quality of our water is only as good as the quality of the bay.”

A new filtration system installed over the past five years apparently would not be enough to prevent serious illness or death to the animals in the aquarium.

What Allen failed to bring up in his report was the growing concern for Lolita, the killer whale, as well as numerous other marine mammals housed in the aquarium. As I point out in my story, folks like Howard Garrett of Orca Network and Ric O’Barry of “The Cove” are raising alarms about the dangers of oil and declaring that it is time to bring Lolita back to her original home in Puget Sound.

Hertz said he will do what it takes to protect animals in the aquarium, and his staff is working on a contingency plan, which may involve financial support from BP. But how quickly can something be built? I guess we’ll have to wait to see the specific plans.

Meanwhile, local biologists have put together a draft plan for returning Lolita to Puget Sound, if circumstances allow. The plan was developed a number of years ago and might need to be updated. But if this oil spill fails to stir up enough action to move Lolita, it seems highly unlikely that she will ever return to Puget Sound.

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Transient killer whales apparently attacked a gray whale near Whidbey Island yesterday, an encounter caught briefly on video. But the orcas seemed to back off before killing the larger marine mammal.

The footage was captured by Wendy Hensel of Chilliwack, British Columbia, who was aboard the whale-watching boat Mystic Sea out of La Conner. KING 5 TV posted the video on its Web site.

The boat’s skipper, Monte Hughes, told King 5 reporter OWEN LEI that whale watchers were observing a gray whale between Whidbey and Camano islands when a group of orcas raced up from behind in a direct line headed for the gray whale.

All the animals disappeared beneath the waves. When the gray whale surfaced, it was belly up. Moments later, the large whale jerked as if being struck from below.
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I’m happy to share this space today with Kitsap Sun reporter Steven Gardner, who offers his personal perspective on orcas.

BY STEVEN GARDNER

Journalists received what might be deserved suspicion of being haters of George W. Bush. If it’s true, I don’t think it’s for the reason most people surmise, that we’re all socialists at heart intent on killing every American Amendment that isn’t the first one.

If we disliked Bush the younger, it had more to do with his reported statement to Joe Biden that he doesn’t “do nuance.”

Reporters dance in nuance. We eat it. For the purposes of this blog, let’s say we swim in it. When we retire, the hardest thing to unload is all the “other hands” we’ve considered. Dunagan has a file cabinet full of them. When Bush said he didn’t do nuance, it was like he was insulting all our mothers.

Dabbling in nuance gives us room to partake in things we might not otherwise do were we among those who take stands. In late 2007 I took my family to SeaWorld in San Diego. In my heart I’m really troubled by the idea of watching animals that can travel entire oceans confined to pools a little bigger than the one I had in my backyard as a kid. But it was when I was a kid that my affection for orcas began, because of a splashing I got from Shamu.

Growing up in Southern California, it was the only way I was going to see orcas in person. As the years went on, I managed to see probably a dozen dolphin shows. I don’t think I grew to have any angst about it until I was working construction during a summer off from college and was sent to a house in an exclusive neighborhood in Laguna Beach. There, on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, I could see a school of dolphins (Maybe they were porpoises. I couldn’t swear under oath that they weren’t two-liter soda bottles with fins.) swimming by beyond the waves.

It sounds cliche, but something can happen to a guy like me who suddenly sees something in a different context, particularly a natural context. Not only did it make me feel good about them, it made me feel good about myself, that I live in a world where animals can be in a place they’ve been for thousands or millions of years, that we haven’t institutionalized all of them. It’s not a thought that comes naturally when you spend most of your days winding your way through asphalt and concrete.

That elation came again when I moved here and the Orcas visited Silverdale. Then on Christmas Day in 2004 I was on a ferry to Seattle and saw an orca off in the distance. That chance sighting was better than the sure thing you get in San Diego.

Still, I thought maybe my kids would appreciate the SeaWorld show. They did.

I, on the other hand, had much the same reaction Steve Lopez from the Los Angeles Times did when he went.. I wouldn’t say I was creeped out, but I was uneasy.

I expected a fun, maybe funny presentation. What you get is a full-on, well-orchestrated production that clearly had been crafted following the pressure that must have come once Free Willy was released in theaters.

And yet months later, when another friend shared pictures of her daughter being one of those who got to go out and touch the whale, I was genuinely happy for her.

Of course the idea that she could have been yanked by her pony tail into the water — something that has apparently never happened in the wild — changes all that.

I’d rather see all those Shamus out in the wild. I would have felt so relieved if SeaWorld officials would have said, “We get it now.” On the other hand, maybe the Tacoma Pocket Gopher wouldn’t have vanished in 1970 if someone had made money by teaching a few of them to jump through hoops. On the other other hand, maybe these animals should matter to me even if I never get to see them.

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Ken Balcomb of the Center for Whale Research has announced that the newest killer whale calf, designated J-46, should be known as “Star,” because the young animal has garnered so much attention.

This newborn calf could become a poster child in the effort to save the Southern Residents from extinction.

Ken’s naming announcement came as a surprise to me, because he rarely uses names for our local orcas. Like most killer whale researchers, Ken and other staffers at the Center for Whale Research generally call the whales by the alpha-numeric system set up by researchers many years ago.
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I received word tonight from Orca Network that a new calf has been born in J Pod. I’ve written the following story for tomorrow’s Kitsap Sun:

New orca calf born in J Pod.
Photo by Jeanne Hyde

A newborn killer whale calf has been reported in J Pod, one of the three pods that frequent the Salish Sea, which includes Puget Sound.

The new baby has been given the designation J-46, the next available number in sequence, said Susan Berta of Orca Network. The calf has been seen with J-28, a 16-year-old orca named Polaris who is presumed to be the mom.

J Pod has been out of the area for days but appeared off San Juan Island this afternoon, Berta said. The pod headed south but made a turn somewhere. At dusk, J and K pods were sighted in Canadian waters near Victoria.

This birth brings the population of J Pod to 27 and the total for all three pods to 87.
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This appears to be J-28′s first baby. See Center for Whale Research.

For some first-hand accounts of the exciting discovery, check blogs by Jeanne Hyde and Monika Wieland.

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“Salish Sea” is now the official name for our inland waterway that stretches across more than 1,400 square miles of Western Washington and British Columbia. See my story in today’s Kitsap Sun.

Salish Sea watershed
EPA graphic

The question now is whether the name will catch on and be used more frequently.

One application that comes to mind is the description of the three pods of killer whales known as Southern Residents. I’ve often referred to these animals as the orcas that frequent Puget Sound. That’s because “Southern Residents” have little meaning to the average reader, who wishes to know why they are “southern” and what I mean by “residents.”

It so happens that the Salish Sea just about defines the range of these whales for a large percentage of the year.

Now I may refer to them as the killer whales that frequent or mainly reside in the Salish Sea — including much of the summer in the San Juan Islands, with winter and fall stints into Puget Sound.

I’m not sure how else I will use this term, but I no longer feel constrained by the idea that the Salish Sea is not a real name and has never been defined by any authority.

Here are some facts about the Salish Sea provided by the SeaDoc Society. (I’ve converted meters to feet and kilometers to miles.)

• Coastline length, including islands: 4,642 miles
• Total number of islands: 419
• Total land area of islands: 1,413 square miles
• Sea surface area: 9,942 square miles
• Maximum depth: 886 feet
• Number of different marine animals species estimated: 20 species of mammals, 128 species of birds, 219 species of fish, and over 3000 species of invertebrates
• Number of species listed as threatened, endangered or are candidates for listing: 64
• Total watershed area, not counting the upper Fraser River area (See Stefan Freelan): 42,000 square miles

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The Samish Tribe recently held a formal ceremony to name J-45, a killer whale first spotted in March. See the Kitsap Sun, March 5. The young orca is the son of J-14, named Samish.

It is becoming a tradition for the Samish Tribe to name the offspring of the whale we call Samish, now a 35-year-old female. Samish is the granddaughter of J-2, or Granny as she is called. Granny is possibly the oldest living orca among the Puget Sound whales.

Officials with The Whale Museum in Friday Harbor participated in the naming ceremony Saturday. They provided the account below, which I think you will enjoy reading.

By the way, some of our local orcas have shown up in Central Puget Sound, where they were sighted this morning between Fauntleroy and Southworth. I have not yet heard if these animals have been identified. (Note: I updated this with a story late this afternoon.)

The Samish Indian Nation Names New Calf J-45

Friday Harbor — On Saturday, October 17, 2009, the Samish Indian Nation held a traditional potlatch naming ceremony for J-45, the newest J Pod calf in the Southern Resident Community of orcas.

The Whale Museum participated in the ceremony by providing ceremonial gifts for the attendees as well as a greeting by Executive Director Jenny Atkinson. The museum was asked to appoint a witness to the ceremony. Because of her role as the Orca Adoption Program Coordinator and the storykeeper of the whales, Jeanne Hyde was named.

“It was an honor to be asked to witness, ” Jeanne noted.
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