SUNDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2018 1R D1 HOSTILE WATERS A SEATTLE TIMES SPECIAL REPORT PART TWO COURTESY OF DR. TERRELL C. NEWBY, PH.D. Lolita, the last surviving orca taken from Puget Sound, is loaded for transport by truck. “She would follow you with her eye,” says Terry Newby, who tried to soothe her on the ride. THE ORCA AND THE ORCA CATCHER How a generation of killer whales was taken from Puget Sound keep my mask on. It is indescribable. What has happened is that all those years I am wanting an animal to e saw the orca looming, so close, in the sea say hello, and one has. I am thunderstruck.” pen hastily welded together for the moreWord of Namu — named for the remote B.C. village than 400-mile tow to Seattle. where he was accidentally caught in a fishermen’s net — “I dive down and oh God, there is this quickly spread. Thousands of onlookers backed up for shadow four feet away, looking at me,” said Ted Griffin, miles on and near Deception Pass Bridge hoping to catch remembering his first moments with Namu, soon to a glimpse when Namu’s Navy, as the orca’s entourage of become the world’s first performing captive killer whale. onlookers, press and promoters was called, passed beThen he heard it: A loud SQUEAK. neath. “I think it is the whale, so I go ‘EEEE’ and within half a Arriving in Seattle on July 28, 1965, Griffin was given second, the whale squeaks,” Griffin said, eyes still wide a hero’s welcome and a key to the city. with the memory. “My God, I am crying, I can barely See > ORCAS, D3 By LYNDA V. MAPES Seattle Times environment reporter H SEATTLE TIMES ARCHIVES Ted Griffin makes world history with Namu in 1965, becoming the first person known to ride a killer whale. SUNDAY, D2 TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2019 Special Advertising 1R DECEMBER 16, 2018Section 1R HOSTILE WATERS O R C A S I N P E R I L RICHARD HEYZA / THE SEATTLE TIMES Ted Griffin holds a fish for Namu in May 1966 at his Seattle Marine Aquarium. Namu, the world’s first captive performing killer whale, became a big attraction on the Seattle waterfront. BRUCE MCKIM / THE SEATTLE TIMES Namu swims in Rich Cove, near Bremerton, where the feature “Namu the Killer Whale” was filmed in early 1966. Ted Griffin and the whale spent day after day together at this cove. Namu died July 9, 1966. BRUCE MCKIM / THE SEATTLE TIMES These two killer whales were captured in Carr Inlet in 1965. The mother escaped, but the younger one was sold to SeaWorld, where she would perform as the first Shamu. SeaWorld was the biggest customer for Puget Sound orcas. D3 SpecialSUNDAY, Advertising Section 16, DECEMBER TUESDAY, 2018 SEPTEMBER 24, 2019 1R HOSTILE WATERS O R C A S I N P E R I L VIC CONDIOTTY / THE SEATTLE TIMES Shamu is readied for her 1965 flight from Sea-Tac Airport to San Diego and transfer to SeaWorld. Don Goldsberry of the Seattle Marine Aquarium stands by as she is moved. < Orcas FROM D1 only to be hammered once again by an assault of overfishBetween 1962 and 1976, the Pacific Northwest was the world’s only source of orcas for ing, development, pollution, Island CANADA Bellingham aquariums. In those years, about 270 orcas were captured, some more than once. Of those habitat degradation and now whales, at least 12 died during captures and more than 50 were kept for display. Of those, all climate change that threatens Victoria have since died but one. CAPTURE SITES us all. Pedder Bay Mark Overland, of Gig HarAREA ENLARGED Namu Penn Cove Salish Sea bor, remembers well watching the orca captures that unfolded before his eyes, and going to BRITISH Everett court to stop them. Now the Port Madison COLUMBIA region’s burgeoning growth and development ever since Port Hardy Rich Cove threaten the orcas in ways just Seattle Vaughn Bay as real as a harpoon. Johnstone Powell River Strait “We saved them, but for Carr Inlet what?” Overland said. 0 15 Budd Inlet Pender Harbour Courtenay It was actually the capture Olympia MILES era that for the first time enVancouver Vancouver abled humans to understand CANADA Tofino Steveston Island Centralia Saturna the complex intelligence of an U.S. Island Bellingham animal that went in a generaVictoria tion from reviled to revered, Pedder Bay and finally, protected. A look PACIFIC back at that period is a remindOCEAN Everett er of how the region’s special rait o St Har In the weeks to come, thousands flocked and paid to see the whale at Griffin’s Seattle Marine Aquarium at Pier 56. Namu fever stoked an international craze for killer whales to put on exhibit all over the nation and the world. Captors particularly targeted the young, the cheapest to ship. For more than a decade, Puget Sound was the primary source of supply. By 1976 some 270 orcas were captured — many multiple times — in the Salish Sea, the transboundary waters between the U.S. and Canada, according to historian Jason Colby at the University of Victoria. At least 12 of those orcas died during capture, and more than 50, mostly Puget Sound’s critically endangered southern residents, were kept for captive display. All are dead by now but one. Despite it all, the southern residents battled their way back to a population of 98 by 2005, Vancouver Steveston Tofino Island Captured, killed: A brutal era takes its toll Saturna Bainbridge Island Seattle 0 30 Tacoma Olympia MILES Tillamook WASHINGTON Portland Int'l relationship with the orca evolved. Namu and Griffin started it all: the orca and orca catcher who would change the world. Sources: Jason M. Colby, “Orca: How We Came to Know and Love the Ocean’s Greatest Predator” (Oxford, 2018), Centralia EMILY M. ENG / THE SEATTLE TIMES Yakima Erich Hoyt, “The Whale Called Killer” (Camden House, 1981), Esri, Natural Earth See > ORCAS, D6 Ted Griffin in October shows a National Geographic photo of him prying open Namu’s mouth to show off his teeth. That photo was taken by Flip Schulke. STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES SUNDAY, D4 TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2019 Special Advertising DECEMBER 16, 2018Section 1R D SpecialSUNDAY, Advertising Section 16, D55 DECEMBER TUESDAY, 2018 SEPTEMBER 24, 2019 1R BRUCE MCKIM / THE SEATTLE TIMES The Penn Cove capture at Whidbey Island in August 1970 resulted in the death of five whales and changed the public’s perception of whale captures. WASHINGTON STATE ARCHIVES The May 1976 orca capture in Budd Inlet at Olympia would prove historic. Loaded in slings and hoisted by a crane, these orcas captured in Budd Inlet were headed for captivity until opponents, including Washington state officials, intervened. WASHINGTON STATE ARCHIVES WASHINGTON STATE ARCHIVES It took a court battle and a fight by multiple state officials to free the whales captured in Budd Inlet and make it the last orca capture ever in America. 1 R SUNDAY, D6 TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2019 Special Advertising 1R DECEMBER 16, 2018Section 1R HOSTILE WATERS O R C A S I N P E R I L COURTESY OF WALLIE V. FUNK PHOTOGRAPHS, CENTER FOR PACIFIC NORTHWEST STUDIES, WESTERN LIBRARIES HERITAGE RESOURCES, WESTERN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, CROPPED FROM ORIGINAL A young female orca is wedged between two adults during the capture at Penn Cove in August 1970. The young whale, Tokitae, later named Lolita, is the only Puget Sound killer whale still alive in captivity. She still performs at the Miami Seaquarium. < Orcas knife slashes to its throat. The U.S. Navy used the whales for target practice in Icelandic waters, as historian Colby recounts in his book, “Orca: How We Came to Know and Love the Ocean’s Greatest Predator.” The Canadians mounted a .50 caliber machine gun overlooking Seymour Narrows in 1961 with which to mow down the whales. Ultimately never fired, it nonetheless symbolized the war on marine mammals underway for decades around the world. In the Northwest, the carnage was wholly embraced by state and federal agencies. Until the early 1960s, the state of Washington paid a bounty on every harbor-seal nose mailed to Olympia, and federal researchers routinely harpooned killer whales to cut them open to learn what they were eating. So when Griffin turned up with Namu, it was a shock that he took the whale alive, and wanted to. He was just getting started. FROM D3 Shot and reviled For thousands of years, the native people of the Northwest have held orcas in high esteem, as their chiefs reincarnate and respected family members that live under the sea. But to non-Indian newcomers to the region, particularly salmon fishermen who saw the whales as competition, orcas were widely regarded as a vermin species and vicious killer to be at best avoided, and whenever possible, exterminated. Ben Helle, archivist at the Washington State Archives in Olympia, needs only one search word in an online database of old newspapers to easily find examples of dread and mutilation: “blackfish.” Such as the frontpage story in The Olympian Daily Recorder on Nov. 8, 1910, cheering the bravery of two teenage boys for cornering a young orca trapped in shallow water, shooting its eyes out and cutting it apart with a knife. It took the young whale three hours to die from uncounted plugs from the boys’ .22 rifle and RICHARD S. HEYZA / THE SEATTLE TIMES Opponents pushed back as the captures and captors lost popularity with the public. Demonstrators in May 1970 picket outside Ted Griffin’s Seattle Marine Aquarium. RON DE ROSA / THE SEATTLE TIMES Ted Griffin’s aquarium at Pier 56 was the holding and transfer point for killer whales sold and shipped all over the nation and the world. Here, four killer whales await transfer Aug. 16, 1970. To catch an orca Awkward and struggling in school, Griffin from his earliest days found refuge and delight in animals. His pets included every- thing from a seagull to a lungfish. Griffin built an 8,000-gallon fish tank behind his family’s Bellevue home. He was scuba diving with rudimentary equipment before he was driving. One of his earliest business ventures was a pet shop on Aurora Avenue. Griffin in 1962 opened his aquarium — no relation to the Seattle Aquarium of today — on the downtown waterfront, hoping to capitalize on the upcoming World’s Fair. A formidable collector of marine life for his attractions, he became obsessed with a personal quest for the ultimate live specimen: a killer whale. When Griffin got a telephone call from fishermen in Canada that they had two whales caught in an abandoned net, Griffin quickly raised $8,000 to buy one (the other had escaped). Nearly broke at the time, he raised the money mostly from waterfront businesses wanting to cash in if Namu was a hit. Griffin, now 83, still quickens with excitement retelling his race by seaplane to B.C. to get the whale, a backpack full of cash slung over his shoulder. His quest for the killer whale was always Continued on next page > JOHNNY CLOSS / THE SEATTLE TIMES Marine-mammal captures became big business. Here, on Oct. 25, 1973, two orcas and two belugas were hoisted from their tanks at Pier 56, trucked to Boeing Field and flown to San Diego’s SeaWorld. D7 SpecialSUNDAY, Advertising Section 16, DECEMBER TUESDAY, 2018 SEPTEMBER 24, 2019 1R HOSTILE WATERS O R C A S I N P E R I L HARLEY SOLTES / THE SEATTLE TIMES Lolita, also called Tokitae, has been held in captivity at the Miami Seaquarium since 1970. Of more than 50 whales taken, mostly from the critically endangered southern resident population, she is the only one still alive, seen here in 1994. < Continued from previous page about more than collecting a moneymaking attraction, Griffin said. He wanted to know the ocean’s feared and even reviled predator for himself. “The world is confused about the whale,” Griffin said, recalling the time when orcas, so beloved today, were detested. “To me, he is just another pet, somebody to make friends with. “In my mind, I had already accepted the whale as a companion. And a friend.” As Namu’s cage was towed to his aquarium, Griffin said he only cared about one thing. “They are making music, celebrating, the fire boats are all shooting in the air. But for me, all I saw was the whale.” Before long, Griffin was inside the net with the ocean’s top predator, touching Namu on his face, then his blowhole. He discovered the whale liked his skin scratched with a brush — belly, back, everywhere. They squeaked back and forth, the whale adjusting his tone to match Griffin’s. Within a month, Griffin made history, becoming the first human ever known to ride a killer whale. Namu, Griffin said, quickly figured out how long Griffin could hold his breath underwater and timed his dives accordingly. Visitors and the press were crazy for the story of Griffin and Namu. National Geographic published a photo of Griffin opening the whale’s jaws that STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES One of the eye bolts used to hold the nets that kept two orcas captive in Kanaka Bay is still embedded in the rocks. Griffin keeps in a frame on the hearth of his home today. Hollywood came calling and made the feature film “Namu the Killer Whale” (“Make Room in Your Heart for a 6-ton Pet” was the subtitle), filmed at Rich Cove near Bremerton. In the netted-off cove, the two spent day after day together. “He doesn’t want me to go back to shore and go home, as long as I am in the water grooming him or riding him,” Griffin remembered. Sometimes, Namu would even hold him close in his pectoral fins. “Namu holds me hostage for his pleasure, as I have held him captive for mine,” Griffin wrote in his autobiography, “Namu, Quest for the Killer Whale.” It was all over in less than a year. Namu died a terrible death the summer after he was captured from a massive bacterial infection caused by the raw sewage polluting Elliott Bay. Griffin, blaming himself, was inconsolable. But by then the world was killer-whale crazy, with orders for live orcas streaming in to Griffin’s business, Namu, Inc., from aquariums around the world. But for Griffin, with Namu gone, whale catching became just what he would call The Business. A dark chapter in Penn Cove It was August 1970, and Griffin had far more whales behind nets than he had ever dealt with, or intended to catch. It was a superpod: a gathering of 90 to 100 orcas — possibly the entire southern-resident population — surging and leaping behind nets at Whidbey Island’s Penn Cove. Alarmed, Griffin knew he had more on his hands than he could safely handle, for either his divers or the whales. He ordered most of them freed, angering his late partner Don Goldsberry and the fishermen who made the initial set of the net, Griffin said. With some 40 whales still captive, Griffin set about the work of sorting the ones to keep and ones to set loose. Cries from the orca families as they were separated still haunt the memories of locals, and even those participating in the capture. Up until then, the captures were covered in The Seattle Times and other media like sporting events whenever Griffin took to the skies in a helicopter, scouting for whales. But this capture during the height of tourist season on Whidbey Island was different. Up close and personal, the capture was harrowing to those who had never seen or heard such a thing before. With no regulations whatsoever to restrain him, Griffin could have taken and sold every last whale. But most “croppers,” as whale catchers called themSee > ORCAS, D8 STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES The last killer whales captured in America were held at Kanaka Bay on San Juan Island before they were released back to the wild. SUNDAY, D8 TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2019 Special Advertising 1R DECEMBER 16, 2018Section 1R HOSTILE WATERS O R C A S I N P E R I L STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES At a May 2018 interfaith gathering in Bellingham, supporters lay hands on an orca totem pole carved at Lummi Nation to raise awareness of the killer whales' plight in Puget Sound and to press for Tokitae’s release. < Orcas FROM D7 selves, still sought — within the limited and often incorrect understanding at that time of orca biology — to manage the live capture business like any other fishery. Opponents seeking to foil the hunt cut one of the Penn Cove nets in the night — resulting in even more tragedy. Griffin, sleeping on the deck of his boat to keep a watch on the whales, heard a change in the orcas’ breathing and saw that some of the lights on the cork line of the net had dipped below the water. He awakened his divers and sent them to search the nets. They found four baby orcas tangled in the drifting net and drowned. Goldsberry suggested they tie anchors to the orcas’ tails to sink the babies out of sight. They slit the bellies to allow gases to escape so the carcasses would not float, tied anchors to the orcas and sank them. Yet another orca, an adult female, would be killed in the hunt before it was all over, bringing the death toll to five. The captors did not count on one of the anchored corpses washing ashore, then eventually three more, dragged from the bottom by a fisherman. The public regard in which Griffin and his capture team were held took a dark turn. The end of an era It wasn’t long before the state of Washington, in the public outcry following the Penn Cove capture, in 1971 set itself up in the whale-hunting business, setting limits on size, and charging permit fees of $1,000 per whale. Griffin — by then his life, his marriage and his finances in ruins — had quit the whalecatching business for good in 1972, selling it to Goldsberry, who then resold the company to SeaWorld. Griffin informally changed his name and moved to Eastern Washington, where he More online Watch archival footage of orca captures on Puget Sound, and hear from a catcher why he did it, and from an opponent how he helped halt them, at st.news/captures About Hostile Waters The Seattle Times’ Hostile Waters series is exploring the plight of the southern resident killer whales, among the mostenduring yet mostendangered symbols of our region. In Part One, we traveled north to a land where another resident population of orcas is thriving in quieter, cleaner waters. Explore the series at st.news/orcaseries Part 2 of this series has been reprinted in this special section. sought obscurity, working as a day laborer for as little as $2 an hour. The federal government that year enacted the Marine Mammal Protection Act, ending whale captures in the U.S. But SeaWorld was allowed to continue its hunts when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 1974 granted the amusement park an economic-hardship exemption. The whales were getting harder to catch, grown wise to the sound of Goldsberry’s boat and tactics, including being chased by helicopter and speedboat and herded with firecrackers. Some of the orcas, by then caught multiple times, had learned to roll their bodies, laying down their dorsal fins on the water, making them harder to spot. The pods would also split up, parents sending the young in another direction and deploying themselves as decoys. After getting skunked by the whales for years, Goldsberry’s 1976 hunt for SeaWorld in Budd Inlet near the state Capitol would prove historic. Ralph Munro, then a staff aide to Gov. Dan Evans, was on a weekend sailing outing when he encountered whales fleeing across the water. Munro quickly realized the orcas were being chased. He saw Goldsberry and his crew lighting seal bombs — underwater firecrackers — one after another, throwing them at the whales, and pursuing the terrified orcas in speedboats. “It was gruesome,” Munro said, grimacing at the memory 42 years later. “As they closed the net there was a guy on the back of the boat with a torch, and he was lighting and dropping these explosives as fast as he could light them, boom, boom, boom, the orcas were screaming … I can still hear them, screaming back and forth. “They had parts of the pod inside the net, and parts of the pod outside the net. It was just panic, totally disgusting. Sickening.” Munro was desperate to intervene. He reached out to the press, and the hunt the next day was front-page news around the region. Munro then enlisted the help of state Attorney General Slade Gorton, who mustered a legal attack on SeaWorld. Evans in a news conference announced his opposition to the hunt, and the state within hours got a federal restraining order, prohibiting SeaWorld from moving the whales, which were by then circling in nets surrounded by more than 100 opponents in kayaks, canoes and on the beach. Munro personally served the restraining order on Goldsberry, approaching his boat in the middle of a dark, rainy night in the company of the biggest game warden he could find. SeaWorld went to work the next morning to quash the injunction. Legal wrangling to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and back landed the controversy once more in federal court in Seattle, where demonstrators lined up on the courthouse steps and down the street demanded a stop to the hunts. Eventually, three of the six captured whales escaped, a fourth was too large and had to be released, and two more ultimately were ordered released back to the wild. SeaWorld, in its settlement agreement, vowed never again to hunt killer whales in Washington waters. The orca hunt in Budd Inlet was the last in America. The hunter and the hunted Today, only one Puget Sound whale still survives from the capture era: Tokitae, or Lolita, held 48 years at the Miami Seaquarium. A few years ago, Griffin went to go visit. Seeing her, he said, he had no regrets. Not about her. Not about any of it. He said his motives were never understood. “I wanted people to see the whale the way I see the whale,” Griffin said. “They are shooting at seals, anything that pops up in the water. I am saying, ‘What are you doing? There is something behind that.’ “Because I want to humanize that person in the sea. Up until this time it is just a beast, it is nothing. I see it as saving the whale from all this mischief, all these bad thoughts. How can I get the public to understand that this is not what they think it is?” Griffin didn’t foresee what that new understanding would mean for himself, as he became the world’s most famous whale catcher. “I had no idea at the time that would start a thought pattern that would bring my career to an end.” But for Lolita, the capture era still goes on, despite attempts to free her. The Lummi Nation is seeking to retire her to a netted cove where she could be cared for. The Miami Seaquarium has refused, saying she is better off at the Seaquarium than at home in hostile waters, where her relatives struggle to survive. Freeing her is about so much more than saving one whale, said Lummi Nation Chairman Jay Julius. It is about finally setting right the relationship not only with the orca, but with Puget Sound. “She was pimped out,” he said of Lolita. “Puget Sound has been pimped out.” Colby, the historian, notes Lolita’s family is going hungry, poisoned by toxic fish, and barren of successful pregnancies for the past three years. Tahlequah, the mother orca who carried her dead baby whale for 17 days last summer to worldwide dismay, came to symbolize for many the orcas’ desperate plight. We are still killing the southern residents for the sake of our own interests and economic gain, Colby said in an interview. “Lolita’s family is starving,” he said. “SeaWorld didn’t do that. The Miami Seaquarium didn’t do that. “That is on us.” Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2515 or lmapes@seattletimes.com; on Twitter: @LyndaVMapes.