Photo: Jared Towers Pacific Orca Society Annual Report 2019 Presented by Helena Symonds and Paul Spong Pacific Orca Society/Orcalab Report topics: • Past & Present: Waves in the pond • Coast-Wide Hydrophone Network • Research/Whales • Corky Update - Sanctuary made for one • Film Projects • Volunteers, Visitors, Caretakers & Carpenters Past & Present: Ripples in the pond When contemplating this report we became reflective about the past. OrcaLab has existed from the early 1970s. Paul and his family set up camp in June 1970. They wanted to find out if it was feasible to study orcas in the wild. Previously their experience was with the captive orcas at the Vancouver Aquarium but they had also been more directly exposed to wild whales at the Pender Harbour capture site in 1968 and 1969. As Paul’s involvement with captive orcas became more intimate and complex he began to understand that keeping whales in captivity was unfair. Expressing these sentiments publicly he was set free of any further obligations to the Aquarium, and went in search of wild whales. This took him to Alert Bay, “Home of the Killer Whale”, late in 1969. Given guidance by many locals he, his family, and some friends set off for Hanson Island several kilometres south of town the following summer. They landed their small craft in a promising bay overlooking Blackney Pass. Sheltered from the prevailing summer northwest winds it seemed like an ideal location. There was even a little creek, and orcas passed by soon after their arrival. It was a new beginning. Returning each summer, like the orcas, the camp grew from tent to hand built shelter, a collection of plastic, old windows, cedar shakes and salvaged beach wood which became beams, shakes, tables, benches and stumps. Each season the old Land Rover was piled high (very high) with equipment, food supplies, building materials - whatever might be needed. In those days there was no highway to the north island and transportation to Alert Bay was via a ferry that was boarded at Kelsey Bay in the “lower” Johnstone Strait. The route of this ferry traced that used by the Northern Resident orcas. Not long after the capture of the A5 pod in December 1969 during which Corky (A16) was taken her sister, A21 was most likely tragically struck and killed by the Powell River ferry (Killer Whales, Second Edition, Ford et al, 2000). But this tragedy, and the sad captures did not deter the orcas from continuing to use these waters, although, that said, they never returned to Pender Harbour. The camp on Hanson Island, known locally as “Hippy Point”, and later as “OrcaLab”, soon became a fixture, attracting many visitors over the years. Hanson Island gave people a focal point to play out their own attraction, fantasies, curiosity and empathy for whales. Many came to help in whatever capacity they could offer. It was the ‘70s and the locals got used to the stream of young people looking for an alternative way to live and engage with Nature. For the people who had grown up on the north island, mainly fishers and loggers, used to a way of life driven by their immediate needs, their communities, the rhythms of the seasons, the availability and health of the salmon, the strength of the forests, and for many the echoes of traditions and history of ancestors who had occupied these lands for thousands of years, it probably took a while to fathom what these “strangers” were about. After her first year teaching at the Alert Bay primary school, known affectionally the “Little School”. Helena went hiking in the Rockies during the summer of 1979. At the Edith Cavell hostel, high up the mountains, during a party to celebrate the full moon, a young, intense man, when he found out that Helena was from Alert Bay, declared with certainty his intention of going to Hanson Island one day because he had just read, “The Starship and the Canoe”. This book, written by Ken Brower, follows the aspirations of a young kayak maker, George Dyson (one of those likeminded young people seeking alternatives) as he discovers life on the coast. George’s father, Freeman Dyson, was a brilliant physicist who had worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. At one point in the book George meets up with Paul, and the reader is introduced to orcas and the Hanson Island way of life. That young man at the hostel never made it to Hanson Island but Helena did soon after meeting Paul the following September in Alert Bay. While there she happened to find an old beat up copy of the “Starship” on one of the shelves. Reading it gave Helena an inkling as to the type of life she would soon experience for the next 40 years. Paul’s life before this was taking its own twists and turns in the early 1970s. In 1972, Paul was invited to a reception at the Georgia Hotel in Vancouver where he met for the first time, Farley Mowat, who was on a book tour for the recent publication of “A Whale for the Killing”. Farley understood the precarious relationship between people and whales and the dismal situation facing whales world wide. Paul and he talked for the whole evening. The upshot of this meeting was that Paul became involved with the efforts to stop whaling. The course of his life was reset and the rest, as they say, “is history”. From his encounter with Farley, Paul became involved with the Canadian branch of Project Jonah hoping, through petitions and appeals, to end Canadian whaling once and for all. Mostly through Farley’s connections and his dogged determination the federal government stopped all whaling operations based in Canadian ports by 1972. The last of the British Columbia whaling stations, Coal Harbour, had been closed in 1967 but two stations had remained in Atlantic Canada. “Whew!”, thought Paul when hearing of the closures, ‘that was easy!” and he quickly turned his attention to other whaling nations, convinced that they too would see the logic, if not the compassion, of stopping killing whales. He set his sights on Japan. By this time Paul was in the process of convincing the fledgling Vancouver based environmental group Greenpeace to become involved with the whaling issue. To raise funds for a trip to Japan, Paul and his new found Greenpeace friends, created the “Christmas Whale Show” which was held in December 1973 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver. In the 1970s hardly anything was really understood about whales. For the audience the integration of music, whale calls, passionate speakers had life changing impacts. For Paul and his wife Linda it meant that they could travel to Japan with their young son Yasha and see if they could bring about changes in Japanese attitudes. It was an extended stay during which they did many presentations in auditoriums located in shopping centres, schools, and other venues. They did not convince Japan to stop whaling but they did form lasting friendships that sowed relationships that resonated on Hanson Island for years afterwards. Two young photographers from Anima magazine, Tomatsu Aoki and Koichi Koaze, inspired by what they heard from Paul, decided to come to Hanson Island almost immediately. They arrived in August, really an amazing commitment of time, money and energy. In those days, Paul was more open to going out in boats to watch the whales. Whale watching was not then a reality, there were very few sports boats on the water, the seine, troller and gill net fishers were numerous but usually focused elsewhere and the orcas had yet to excite many other researchers. These young photographers managed to capture a spectacular breach and other orca photos that were featured in their magazine when they went back home. Also influenced by Paul’s ideas in 1974 was a young school girl, Haruko Sato, who listened to Paul during his presentation at her school. Haruko became determined to play out her dream of seeing orcas in the wild. She worked at whatever jobs she could find and saved up enough money for the trip to Canada. She achieved this by the time she was 17 and arrived in 1982. By then the Lab was undergoing a shift in attitudes about boat based research. Johnstone Strait had become a busy place. The road to the north island had been pushed through in 1978/9 and this opened up the area to an influx of tourists, mostly sports fishers, but whale watching was soon an additional draw. Commercial fishing was also still active and so the area was very busy. Paul and Helena (by this time Paul’s partner) decided to try to develop remote systems that would allow them to gather passive data through a network of hydrophones. Haruko, or Hal as she liked to be called, stepped on to Hanson Island just when this transition was beginning. During her first visit the whales did an unexpected disappearance in Blackney Pass for nearly three weeks. Paul worried that Hal, after coming so far, would be terribly disappointed, told her he was so sorry that she hadn’t seen whales, to which Hal replied, “Oh no! Dr Spong, I see whales every day!” Paul, surprised, inquired further. Hal explained that she spent her days up the cliff that overlooks Blackney Pass, beyond the Lab, where everyday she sat and plotted the movements of any Dalls Porpoise, Minke whales and every animated being that appeared. Hal went on to assist with the emerging remote hydrophone systems and despite all its trials and errors managed to develop a keen ear and understanding of the different orca calls and orca behaviour.