Film: Guardians of the Sea: Orcas (Canada)

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00:00:00: SOUND UP; [MUSIC PLAYS – SOUND OF WHALES]
00:00:01: EXPLORE
00:00:06: CHARLIE: Orcas are beautiful creatures. An Orca is actually not even a whale. It is a dolphin. In fact, it is the largest species of dolphin that exists on the planet. A resident Orcapod is a family-based group. The Orcas live together from the day they’re born to the day they will pass. One of the things that I found really fascinating about the resident Orca pod is that, when the season is over, they leave their homes, but none of the scientists know where they go. We’re gonna meet two scientists, Dr. Paul Spong and Ken Balcomb, two individuals who lives have been dedicated to the betterment of marine life, in particular, Orcas. Two individuals whose styles are completely different.
00:00:55: CHARLIE: (CONTINUED) We’ve just arrived at Port Hardy where we’re going to meet Dr. Paul Spong and learn about the northern resident Orca pods.
00:01:01: DR. PAUL SPONG, Founder, OrcaLab: In this community, which is occupies the Central Coast of British Columbia, there are about 230 members. It’s called the Northern Resident Community. They occupy a pretty big ocean space, thousands of square kilometers of space. There’s a huge abundance of food in this space and yet the population is small. These guys have been here in these local waters for about 10,000 years probably, in fact, since the last Ice Age.
00:01:27: CHARLIE: He’s one of many scientists responsible for putting a halt to taking Orcas from the wild and preventing them from being shipped to marine parks. He doesn’t belief that people should be interacting up-close, in boats with the Orcas, but that we should respect their territory and observe and record them by land-based observation only.
00:01:46: DR. SPONG: The Orca Life Project is a very interesting use of technology to connect people with nature. The technology needs some development before it reaches sort of the optimal capability. Basically, what we’re trying to do is connect people to nature in real time.
00:02:04: DR. SPONG: Using the remote camera and the Internet, we’re able to show people what happens. And so we have sort of a choice of six cameras.
00:02:13: CHARLIE: His specialty is linguistics. So, off the coast of Hanson Island, he’s placed microphones throughout the Bay. He studies the way Orcas communicate through clicks and squeaks and how they use soundwaves, known as eco-location, to find fish.
00:02:28: DR. SPONG: Strangely enough, what we’re doing now is very similar to what we were doing when we first came to Hanson Island. Our objective was to find a place on the shore that we could watch whales from and put a Hydrophone in the water and listen to their sounds and that’s pretty much exactly what we’re doing now.
00:02:44: CHARLIE: How many Hydrophones do you have in the water now?
00:02:46: DR. SPONG: Uh, there are six of them, up and down Johnson Strait, about fifty square kilometers. (MAP OF REGION)
00:02:52: DR. SPONG: Orcas are the most powerful predator in the ocean. They have extraordinary physical power and they literally have the ability to do whatever they want to do, physically, to anything – anything else in the ocean, including themselves. And it seems fairly obvious that a long time ago they reached the conclusion that the use of physical force isn’t very constructive or effective in terms of managing the society. Orcas live very long lives. The females, uh, have, uh, opportunities to have many more offspring than they actually do have. So, one wonders, you know, about whether the fact that there’s a low population is something that just happened or whether there’s some intent associated with it.
00:02:37: CHARLIE: We’re now leaving Hanson Island and returning to the United States where we’ll visit the Southern Orca Resident Pod. Dr. Ken Balcomb is a scientist who is known for discovering that the Navy sonar might be responsible for beaching the whales. His background is in the Navy.
00:03:55: KEN BALCOMB, Founder, Center for Whale Research: I want to welcome you to the Center for Whale Research. Today, we’re gonna explore the life of the Southern Resident killer whales of San Juan Island.
00:04:05: DR. BALCOMB: I was a whale biologist before I went into the Navy and then what the Navy did was, uh, immerse me and acquaint me with underwater sound. We’ll put a Hydrophone in the water and we’re getting a little underwater sound. If they’re out here chatting we should hear them. They’re out there lob-tail splashing, breaching, carrying on. They’re way more active than the Northerns.
00:04:26: DR. BALCOMB: When I was twelve I read this book called Circus Doctor –
00:04:29: CHARLIE: Hmmm mmm.
00:04:30: DR. BALCOMB: - and I wanted to do something with wild animals. I went down to the whaling stations and I thought, “Now, there’s a species that needs some study. Our main mission is to document the status of the population. In this case, killers whales. We’ve done blue whales, fin whales, humpbacks, and beaked whales. Document what’re the facts – how many are there and then let the public and the government know. We started a Center for Whale Research. Every year, we have, uh, college students or young people volunteer to be staff. A lot of them want to be paid and we tell them, unfortunately, that’s not the case, but you can be fed and you can camp in the yard, and you can meet all these other wonderful people and you can help study these amazing whales. If I had the money, I’d endow it so there would always be funding available, just have it go beyond my lifetime.
00:05:29: DR. BALCOMB: Okay, so this is where we keep our Earthwatch teams. This is their house. In the summer, oh, probably 20% of the mornings I’ll wake up and the whales are right off that point, coming this way.
00:05:47: DR. BALCOMB: See, if you look for about ten minutes, you give them time to come to the surface. They’re - They spend sometimes seven, eight minutes underwater. In the sixties, the aquariums learned that they could catch and keep these animals in a tank and they were huge attractions for all the marine parks and a big industry started in this area, catching them and selling them all over the world. Most of them died within a year or two, but it seemed like there was an unlimited supply. They just kept catching and selling and by the time that stopped in 1976, there were only 68 left.
00:06:30: CHARLIE: You can feel his connection, his passion to protect what he believes to be the most sacred creatures on this planet. Dr. Ken Balcomb has created a system of recognizing his Orcas. He does it by classifying their dorsal fins. Each Orca has a unique marking.
00:06:50: DR. BALCOMB: Take a high resolution picture of the dorsal fin and saddle patch, the grey area. The female generally has a lower fin, about two feet tall, and it’s re-curved or triangular, whereas the male’s fin grows to about six feet, and is, uh, usually triangular or even leans forward. There’s three main pods in this area – J, K, and L. There’s 24 in J right now, 21 in K, and 44 or 45 in L, depending on who’s still alive. We’ve had three new babies this year.
00:07:25: CHARLIE: But there’s none more famous than J1, also known as “Ruffles.”
00:07:30: DR. BALCOMB: J-pod is our most resident pod in the Puget Sound area. Jl is the, the patriarch so-to-speak. Actually, for a while, he was the only adult male in the whole population.
00:07:44: CHARLIE: It says here that there’s a female estimated to be born in 1911?
00:07:49: DR. BALCOMB: Right. Well, we estimate she’s the mother of J1 because she’s travelling like moms do. They say J2 and J1 are always together and that is the way mothers and their sons and daughters travel, is always together - a bonding that is also functional. All the babies help herd the fish. See, they have to herd fish. It’s useful to do that with animals that you know very well, that you’ve lived with all your life. You know, each knows what the other’s going to do in a certain situation.
00:08:18: DR. BALCOMB: Well, the new babies are going to be born at about 400 pounds – 350, 400 and 8 feet long – and the largest in here is J1. He’s probably about 26 feet and, uh, 16,000 pounds. He’s probably 55. He would eat probably, uh, 240 pounds of salmon each day. We’ve been doing this thirty years. He was one of the most recognizable whales when we started and he’s just gotten even more majestic and recognizable as time goes on. That little stream of water coming off the tip of his fin. Well, the way that you, uh, eventually get to know them best and time your photography, if nothing else, is by holding your breath as long as they do – you know, just sort getting a sense of their rhythm. I seem to be stuck in a rut of trying to photo-identify everybody all the time, but sometimes it’s nice just to put the camera down and just be there.
00:09:30: [GRAPHICS – www.whaleresearch.com, www.orcalab.org, www.explore.org]
00:09:41: END OF FILM

Now Viewing: Guardians of the Sea: Orcas

Dr. Paul Spong of Orca Lab studies orca linguistics. Ken Balcomb of the Center for Whale Research discovered the impact that navy sonar was having on whales. Meet the world's leading experts on orcas.

: United States
Location:: San Juan Islands, Washington
: Canada
Location:: Hanson Island, British Columbia
Date:: September 2006
Grants Awarded:: Pacific Orca Society ($25,000) , Center for Whale Research ($100,000)