From pariahs to cultural icons: The Pacific Northwest has thankfully come to love orcas

Few crea­tures were more despised, and more often blamed for con­di­tions not their doing, than the orca whales of Puget Sound and the Strait of Geor­gia back in the 1960s.

They were always called “killer whales.” A Nation­al Geo­graph­ic pro­file dubbed them sav­ages of the sea, ruth­less killers who ripped pieces out of still-liv­ing prey. Marine mam­mals were blamed for the decline of salmon — nev­er mind what we humans had already done to streams essen­tial for spawning.

Namu, the first cap­tive orca, was treat­ed as a kind of caged sav­age when cap­tor Ted Grif­fin trans­port­ed him to a water­front aquar­i­um in Seattle.

My fam­i­ly were part of the crowd that lined the Decep­tion Pass Bridge.

Namu died a dread­ful death, the vic­tim of raw sewage in Seattle’s Elliott Bay.

But cap­tors didn’t stop. They even­tu­al­ly trapped two hun­dred and sev­en­ty orcas, seek­ing out young whales to turn into performers.

Tok­i­tae, cap­tured in 1970 at Whid­bey Island, was the last cap­tive orca, a sta­ple at Seaquar­i­um in Mia­mi for half a cen­tu­ry per­form­ing as Lolita.

“Toki” had been slat­ed for return to Puget Sound waters.

We came, alas far too slow­ly, to final­ly appre­ci­ate orcas.

They speak to each oth­er, with Toki for years mak­ing sounds record­ed in her native L‑pod of our south­ern res­i­dent orca population.

The cap­ture of the whales could be bru­tal and ter­ror­iz­ing. Under­wa­ter fire­crack­ers, nick­named “seal bombs” were used. When Don McGaf­fin of KING TV sought to expose the hunt, hunters tried to run down his skiff.

The orcas acquired defenders.

The Lum­mi peo­ple con­sid­er Toki a rel­a­tive and cam­paigned for the whale’s return home (they are now cam­paign­ing for a bur­ial here). Treat­ed with con­tempt when I was grow­ing up in Belling­ham, the Lum­mi Nation is now a force for nature. They stopped the Gate­way Pacif­ic Coal Export Ter­mi­nal pro­posed for Cher­ry Point.

The state in 1971 set lim­its on whale captures.

Con­gress passed the Marine Mam­mal Pro­tec­tion Act, albeit with a pro­vi­sion that allowed the forcible recruit­ment of per­form­ing orcas to continue.

The gal­va­niz­ing inci­dent came in 1976 when whale cap­tor Don Golds­bury trapped six orcas in Olympia’s Budd Inlet. The whole world was watching.

Appalled after view­ing the cap­ture, guber­na­to­r­i­al aide (future Sec­re­tary of State) Ralph Munro mobi­lized south­ern res­i­dent Repub­li­cans. Anoth­er wit­ness, Seat­tle Post-Intel­li­gencer Capi­tol reporter Mike Lay­ton, wrote a furi­ous sto­ry, topped by a P‑I head­line com­pa­ra­ble to V‑J Day. The off­spring of Willi and Jolene Unsoeld pad­dled kayaks out to the enclo­sure and tried to talk to the orcas.

The whales them­selves were resource­ful. Three of the six escaped on their own. Gov­er­nor Dan Evans denounced the capture.

Attor­ney Gen­er­al Slade Gor­ton ini­ti­at­ed fed­er­al court action.

I had one tiny bit of involve­ment. The phone rang at my P‑I desk, the caller being for­mer Min­neso­ta Sen. and anti-Viet­nam War pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Eugene McCarthy. He was on the board of direc­tors at Alfred Knopf. The book pub­lish­er had acquired Sea­World, where the whales would perform.

I ran down the controversy.

Clean Gene had one ques­tion on his mind. Was Sen­a­tor War­ren Mag­nu­son, a spon­sor of the Marine Mam­mal Pro­tec­tion Act, of a mind to get involved?

Yes, I told him. Which was what he need­ed to know.

Faced with fed­er­al court action, a pub­lic rela­tions night­mare — and Mag­gie — Sea World sur­ren­dered its prey. The remain­ing orcas were set loose and the scene in Budd Inlet marked the last whale cap­ture in waters of the Sal­ish Sea.

Howard Gar­rett, of Orca Net­work, post­ed last week that all three pods of the south­ern res­i­dent pop­u­la­tion had come togeth­er off the west side of San Juan Island, a rare “super-pod” event.

“We believe they are wel­com­ing Toki home,” he wrote.

The south­ern res­i­dent pop­u­la­tion increased after the end of cap­ture but has since declined to sev­en­ty-three orcas. They have been clas­si­fied under the Endan­gered Species Act, as have the chi­nook salmon, their prin­ci­ple food source. (Rea­son­able Dan Evans Repub­li­cans have also now become a crit­i­cal­ly endan­gered species.)

Where once reviled, orca whales are now con­sid­ered an indi­ca­tor species in the nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al ecosys­tems of our great Pacif­ic North­west. They have a much more impor­tant role than to per­form. Wel­come home, Toki.