GOLD RIVER, B.C. – Efforts to reunite a lone killer whale with its family pod have been postponed to allow Indians in this remote Vancouver Island community to spend more time with the orca they believe embodies the spirit of their late chief.
Marilyn Joyce, marine mammal coordinator for Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans, met Friday with Chief Mike Maquinna of the Mowachaht-Muchalaht band. Afterward, she said the attempt to capture the whale would not resume until early next week.
“What our operational team would like to do today is respect that the First Nations are practicing their cultural traditions on the water and give them some space to do that,” Joyce said.
Scientists and veterinarians this week had hoped to begin their intricate plan to capture the whale nicknamed Luna by luring it into a floating net pen. But tribal members took to the water in traditional dugout canoes Wednesday and led the whale out to the middle of Nootka Sound.
The paddlers have gone out in their canoes every morning since, singing traditional songs and stamping their canoe paddles on the bottom of the boats in an effort to draw the whale to them.
Maquinna has said his people believe the 5-year-old whale embodies the spirit of Maquinna’s father, who died around the same time in 2001 as the orca appeared, alone, in Nootka Sound. Maquinna said his father made a deathbed wish for his spirit to inhabit a killer whale.
In a ceremony, the tribe gave the orca the tribal name of the late Chief Ambrose Maquinna: Tsux’iit, pronounced sooke-eat. As such, the whale is considered a member of the Maquinna family and Mowachaht-Muchalaht people.
Scientists refer to the whale as L-98, reflecting his birth order in L-pod, his family that spends the summer months in the waters around southern Vancouver Island and Washington state’s San Juan Islands.
Officials with the fisheries department say the whale, who weighs nearly 2 tons, has become too fond of human company, which is dangerous to him and people. He routinely nudges boats, pops up to see what’s happening on the Gold River dock, and recently surfaced in the path of a landing floatplane.
Officials blame people who have been too keen to interact with the whale, including one who tried to pour beer down his blowhole and another who tried to brush his teeth.
Video footage of the Indian paddlers showed them stroking and scratching Luna – even rubbing his teeth – as the whale playfully swam alongside the canoes.
That interaction prompted some environmentalists to demand the tribal members be prosecuted, since it’s a federal crime to interact with a whale.
Maquinna said he ordered the paddlers to have no further direct contact with the whale.
The Indians have suggested they be allowed to lure the orca to their canoes, then tempt him to follow them down the west coast of Vancouver Island to the Victoria area.
Joyce has flatly rejected that plan, saying it would require a voyage of about 220 miles along the island’s often stormy coast, posing a danger to the whale and the humans.
Instead, the fisheries department and scientists at the Vancouver Aquarium hope to lure the whale into a net pen just off the Gold River shores. If medical tests determine he is healthy, the whale would be lifted in a sling into a water-filled container, then trucked to Pedder Bay, near Victoria. There, the whale would be placed in another net pen and released when his pod is within acoustic distance.
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