In November 1961 a collecting crew from one of the first dolphinaria in the US Marineland of the Pacific - near Los Angeles in California, captured a female orca found swimming erratically in nearby Newport harbor. The 5.2m (17ft) killer whale was placed in a tank at Marineland where she repeatedly crashed into the walls. She died the following day.
In 1962 the same crew managed to lassoo a female whale with a hoop net in Puget Sound, off the north-west coast of the US, but the line tangled around the propeller shaft and immobilized the boat. When the whale and her male companion charged the boat, thumping it with their tail flukes, the frightened Marineland crew fired at the whales, killing the female, and injuring the male, who swam off.
Two years later, the Vancouver Pacific Aquarium hired sculptor Samuel Burich to go out and kill an orca to use as a life-size model on which to base an exhibit. An orca pod was sighted close to the Gulf Islands, off the coast of British Columbia, and Burich fired a harpoon into a young whale's back but this failed to kill it. Before he could finish the job with a rifle, aquarium director, Murray Newman arrived by seaplane and suggested they try to bring the whale in alive. Using the line attached to the harpoon, they towed the orca through rough seas on a 16-hour journey to Vancouver harbour, where it was placed in a makeshift pen. Over the next few weeks, tens of thousands of people from around the world came to see 'Moby Doll', the first of these legendary killers to be placed in captivity, and to marvel at its docility. The harpoon wound healed but the whale wouldn't eat until, on the 55th day, it began to take food, devouring up to 90kg (200lbs) of fish a day. Within a month however, the whale was dead. The autopsy revealed that 'Moby Doll' was in fact 'Moby Dick', a male not a female.
The saga of 'Moby Whatever' convinced aquarium keepers that orcas would adapt to captivity, that they were not as dangerous as legend had portrayed them and that, like other zoo animals, they could be trained to perform stunts by using food as a reward. Moreover, their notoriety as killers combined with their panda-like attractiveness, had the potential to draw unprecedented crowds to aquaria. They were right on all counts.
In 1965, the Seattle Public Aquarium in Washington State paid $8,000 for Namu, a big male, that had been accidentally caught by Canadian gill net fishermen. Four months later, Ted Griffin, owner of the Aquarium, and his assistant Don Goldsberry, netted Shamu, a prospective mate for Namu, in Puget Sound. The two whales performed together in Seattle until the following year when Namu died. With the sale of Shamu to Sea World in San Diego, the trade in orcas began in earnest.
The Griffin-Goldsberry team were the first to develop successful methods for the capture and transport of orcas, and their capture technique is still in use today off the coast of Iceland. Purse seine nets are used to surround a pod of orcas, sometimes in open water but more often in a shallow bay or inlet. Ironically, the whales could easily jump over the nets or break through them but few orcas have ever attempted to escape. Selected whales are then hoisted from the water in a sling and suspended in a box where they are cooled by water or shaved ice. They are then ready for transport by boat, truck or cargo plane to any location in the world.
By the end of 1968, Griffin and Goldsberry had carried out four such capture operations in the Pacific Northwest region and had taken 13 whales, three of which ended up at Sea World after spending some time in Seattle. Others were sold to aquaria in New York, Florida, Texas, Canada and England, and to the US Navy in Hawaii.
The growing market prompted a group of Canadian net fishermen across the border at Pender Harbour, British Columbia, to begin catching orcas. In 1968 and 1969 they made three trips and captured 12 orcas, which were sent to the Vancouver Aquarium, to Marineland of France and to Sea World's competitors in California - Marineland of the Pacific and Marine World near San Francisco. Several other fishermen in British Columbia caught orcas accidentally and these too were sold.
At this time, there were no regulations governing the catching of killer whales and, potentially, anyone who wished to try their luck at it could do so. In practice, however, a would-be captor had to know the sea and to have had some experience with marine animal collection and seine nets. That limited the field considerably. No one at that time knew much about orcas and early capture techniques evolved by trial and error. As a result, some orcas that were stunned by tranquilizer darts were lost in the ocean; several others became entangled in nets and drowned. That was the price of the learning curve.
When the whales arrived at their new homes, many died prematurely, some from injuries caused by their capture and transport, others from what aquarium directors today consider poor conditions: small tank size, inadequate water pumping facilities and excessive or inept handling in the tank. Before 1970, half of all aquarium orcas died during their first two years in captivity, most in the first year. There were a few exceptions. Ten orcas caught before 1970 survived ten years or more and two of these have now passed the 20-year mark the record for longevity in captivity.
1970 was the peak year for orca captures in the Pacific Northwest, with 16 being taken from the wild, and stories about orcas received wide coverage in both local and national media.
In March of that year Sealand of the Pacific, based in Victoria, British Columbia, began their own whale-catching operation. Chimo, an orca captured on their first trip, was a striking all-white young female, whose albinism was caused by a rare genetic disorder called Chediak-Higashi Syndrome. By now orcas were selling for tens of thousands of US dollars but such was the attraction of this rare white orca that a US aquarium offered to buy it for half a million dollars. Sealand declined the offer and displayed Chimo until she died two years and eight months later.
While Chimo was attracting all the limelight, three members of her pod, captured at the same time, languished in nets at Pedder Bay, west of Victoria, refusing to eat. After 78 days, one of them died and the other two - a male and female that were scheduled to go to an aquarium in Texas - were freed one night by persons unknown. To this day, the pair can be seen swimming around Vancouver Island, and since 1979 they have been seen with a calf.
But the most extraordinary catch of the year came in August when Griffin and Goldsberry captured some 80 whales at Penn Cove, Washington. Never before or since have so many whales been captured at once. Although they were unaware of it at the time, Griffin and Goldsberry had captured three pods travelling together. Those 80 whales comprised almost the entire 'resident' orca population off southern Vancouver Island and in Puget Sound. For a day, until they released the majority of the whales, the fate of an entire 'community' or breeding stock of orcas was in the hands of two unregulated collectors. As news of the capture spread, aquarium orders poured in. Seven whales were shipped to aquaria in Japan, England, France, Australia and the US.
A few months later, near the site of this capture, three young orcas, their bellies slit, their tails weighted with anchor chain, washed ashore, Griffin and Goldsberry denied knowledge of the corpses. Later, as evidence mounted, they admitted responsibility for four accidental deaths.
These events, and the continued capture of local orcas for world aquaria, led to a public outcry in the Northwest. As a result the Canadian authorities, and subsequently the state of Washington, imposed new regulations and permit requirements for capturing killer whales, Finally, in 1972, the US Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) was passed by Congress and orcas were at last protected from being harrassed or killed, and would-be captors now had to apply for a special federal permit.
Beginning in 1973, the Canadian federal government funded a field study to determine the orca population in the Northwest. The captors claimed they saw hundreds of orcas on their spotting trips, and estimated their total numbers in thousands. Using a detailed photoidentification study, Michael A. Bigg and his colleagues in Canada, and later Kenneth C. Balcomb in US waters, determined that about 300 killer whales frequented the waters of the British Columbia-Washington coast. In other words, the catchers had consistently been taking orcas from the same pods. This evidence, combined with public opinion, has helped to limit the Northwest captures ever since and, in recent years, the cropped' pods have increased in numbers After the 1970 deaths of the 'Penn Cove Four', Griffin sold the Seattle Aquarium to Sea World and dropped out of the capture business. Until recently Goldsberry continued to participate in the capture of killer whales around the world as Sea World's Corporate Director of Collections.
Today, Sea World has four large marine parks, in California, Florida, Ohio and, most recently, in Texas. The company has built its marketing strategy on orcas, trademarking the name Shamu, as well as Kandu and Namu. Each park has at least two orcas; some, at times, have had up to six. The animals are moved around from park to park as needed. When one Shamu dies, a new one takes its place.
Sea World's need for new orcas has fuelled most of the controversy over captures since the early 1970s. In 1976, Goldsberry used aircraft and explosives to chase a pod of six orcas through Puget Sound, finally cornering them in Budd Inlet. The State of Washington filed a lawsuit against Sea World in federal court, charging that Goldsberry's inhumane treatment of the whales violated the terms of his collecting permit. The whales were held in nets for days as a result of a court injunction. The judge subsequently dismissed the case on condition that Sea World release the whales, relinquish its permit and agree never to collect orcas again in Washington State.
That's when Goldsberry went to Iceland. He did not want to be officially involved in the new capture operation but agreed to lend his expertise to W.H. Dudok van Heel, zoological director of the Dutch Dolfinarium Harderwijk, and Jon Kr. Gunnarsson, director of Saedyrasafnid, an aquarium near Reykjavik. Their first captures were two young whales, netted during the autumn of 1976, which were airlifted to the Netherlands; one remained there while the other was forwarded to San Diego's Sea World after six months.
The same team captured six orcas in October 1977, and a further five the following year. Sea World had now received nine new whales in two years, enough to satisfy their immediate requirements and they therefore dropped out of the project. Gunnarsson then took over the Icelandic captures using International Animal Exchange of Ferndale, Michigan, USA, to handle sales to the world market. The going rate for a healthy young orca in November 1979 was $150,000 excluding delivery costs from Reykjavik; in 1980, the prices ranged from $200,000 to $300,000. By the early 1980s, Sea World wanted more Icelandic orcas. Their import application to the US National Marine Fisheries Service was refused, however, partly because the status of the species in the North Atlantic was unknown. Sea World considered capturing Antarctic orca, but the logistics were forbidding. Instead they prepared a permit application for Alaska.
In 1983, Sea World announced a grand scheme to expand their operations and mount a five-year capture plan in southeastern Alaskan waters. They proposed capturing 100 orcas, 90 for research purposes and eventual release, ten to be kept for Sea World parks. Despite outcry from conservationists, the National Marine Fisheries Service issued the permit. Sea World agreed to mount a photographic identification study on Alaska's orcas in the summer of 1984. The Sea World Research Institute/Hubbs Marine Research Center assembled a competent research team and produced a solid scientific study but the state governor and many Alaskan residents and conservationists were strongly opposed to any captures. After months of protest, Sea World finally withdrew. With the collapse of the Alaskan operation, Sea World tried several new strategies to obtain orcas. In late 1986, Sea World's parent company, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, purchased Marineland of the Pacific for $23.4 million. Sea World officials promised to keep the park open but two months later moved Orky and Corky, the park's two star orcas, from Los Angeles to San Diego and closed down Marineland.
Sea World's most highly publicized route for obtaining new orcas has been through their breeding program. On 26 September, 1985, the first 'Baby Shamu' was born at Sea World in Florida. Since then, five more Baby Shamus have been born, three in the autumn of 1988. Five of the six were still alive in February 1990. Prior to this, five orcas had been born alive in aquaria but none had lived for more than 46 days; a further five were stillborn.
On the basis of its breeding record, Sea World has been granted permits to import whales from aquaria in other countries on 'breeding loan' and has subsequently obtained whales from the Netherlands, England, and Canada.
Sea World has invested substantial research funds to determine the population of the North Atlantic killer whale and to review the history of their capture in Icelandic waters through the Sea World Research Institute/Hubbs Marine Research Center.
However, the results of these studies will not be known for some time. Researchers have so far identified only 143 individual orcas in the capture areas off Iceland, from photographs dating back to 1981. They feel this represents a conservative estimate of the Icelandic population; shipboard sightings may indicate as many as 4,000 orcas. The Icelandic Ministry of Fisheries has, in any case, been restricting capture permits to between four and ten per year. There are now two main permit holders, Jon Kr. Gunnarsson (Saedyrasafnid Aquarium) and Helgi Jonasson of the Fauna Co., both Icelanders.
Compared to many dolphinaria, the conditions at Sea World's parks are among the best. Orcas there receive good veterinary care and their survival rate has been above average for captive orcas. Yet Sea World's program includes riding the animals, making them do numerous shows every day and exposing them to sustained close contact with large crowds, far larger than at other aquaria.
Former trainer Graeme Ellis, who worked with orcas at Sealand and at the Vancouver Aquarium, contends that this intensive program may be all right initially for younger animals but that, after a time, the whales suffer stress and may become violent. There have been at least a dozen publicized cases of Sea World orcas turning on trainers. Several trainers have suffered broken bones and other internal injuries and some have sued for damages.
In August 1989, at Sea World in San Diego, Kandu charged another female orca, fatally injuring herself in what appeared to be a fight for dominance. Sea World said the death was an accident following routine aggressive play. Critics suggest it was 'artificial behavior' brought on by stress after years in captivity; such violent displays have never been witnessed among orcas in the wild.
In 1989, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich sold Seaworld to Anheuser-Busch, the world's largest brewer, for $ 1, 100 million.
Killer whales are the most popular of all marine attractions. Since the first capture, almost 30 years ago, 150 killer whales have been kept in 40 aquaria around the world. This includes 13 born in captivity, 56 from British Columbia and Washington State, one from California and 55 from Iceland. An additional 12 escaped or were released from captivity. Iceland is likely to remain the principal supplier of orcas to world aquaria for the forseeable future.
Also included are the 13 orcas which have been captured for Japanese aquaria in local offshore waters since 1972. Three that had survived being harpooned were sold to aquaria; the others were herded into shallow water by Japanese drive fisheries. Six of the orcas caught died within a year; one has so far survived for 10 years.
Several studies have looked at captive orca survival, reproduction rates and causes of death but only in selected animals kept under the best conditions. The cause of death in half of these cases was bacterial infection, with pneumonia topping the list.
A US study by marine mammal researchers Douglas DeMaster and Jeannie Drevenak determined that, on the basis of a limited sample mainly from US institutions where standards tend to be highest, orcas were living for an average of about 13 years from the date of their capture. Most of these were immature whales less than ten years old at the time of capture. In the wilds of British Columbia, long term studies have revealed that male and female orcas live to about 60, females sometimes 20 years longer. Thus, to date, wild orcas are living two to three times longer than those in captivity.
Currently, 48 orcas are held captive in 18 aquaria around the world. The controversy continues.
Source: The Greenpeace Book of Dolphins