Exploring our magical connection to the orca
Fascinating new book whets the appetite for Royal B.C. Museum’s future exhibit
One of the most powerful and important symbols of the coastal areas of British Columbia is the orca.
That apex predator — also known as the killer whale — was set to be the star of Victoria’s Royal B.C. Museum exhibit Orcas: Our Shared Future, but due to the COVID19 pandemic, the exhibit’s opening has been pushed to May 21, 2021.
Despite the delay, the museum has released a companion book to the exhibit: Spirits of the Coast: Orcas in Science, Art and History.
The book is a wonderful collection of ideas and impressions of the orca from a mix of people including renowned environmentalists; marine biologists; Indigenous knowledge keepers; poets; former aquarium whale show trainers; and even a group of young kids from a bioregional forest school.
Former wilderness guide, Indigenous media maker and environmental educator Nikki Sanchez put the book together, with editing from museum curators Martha Black, Lorne Hammond and Gavin Hanke.
“Really, the desire with this book was to bring forward some of that magic and some of that connection that (orcas) bring to our existence here,” Sanchez said recently from her home in Victoria.
The book, which is both a history lesson and a proposal for the future, is packed with thoughtful insights, historical perspectives and traditional First Nations stories.
It also visually shines, with a wide range of beautiful artwork and photography. It’s that inclusion of visual storytelling that makes this book so accessible — and a great addition to any coffee table or bookshelf.
“We wanted a book that, whether you are nine or 90, it would be something that would capture your imagination and there would pieces in there for you,” said Sanchez.
“It speaks from many different perspectives, whether it be science and biology, or oral history or futurism. It is really allowing people to engage with a multitude of perspectives around orcas, as well as our connection and responsibility to them.”
On the B.C. coast, it’s the Southern Resident killer whales that command much attention. Once a group of 200 or so, the clan is currently only 72 members — a number that’s threatened daily by environmental impacts like tanker travel, exposure to toxins, and a dwindling food supply.
In Spirits of the Coast, one of the most fascinating pieces is an essay by biologist and director of the Raincoast Foundation Misty MacDuffee.
MacDuffee tells the reader, “the Southern Resident killer whales that ply the waters off coastal British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest are often distinguished from other ecotypes of killer whales based on diet, dialect and culture.”
MacDuffee’s job has her currently doing fieldwork on juvenile salmon in the Fraser River and the Fraser Estuary, which is the main source of the Chinook salmon that feed the local whales.
“The Fraser itself, especially from a killer whale perspective, is one of the most important rivers for them. It has been heavily industrialized, urbanized, altered (leaving) a lot of compromised habitat,” said MacDuffee from her home on Pender Island.
“Our work directly feeds into how we can restore function and connectivity within the Fraser Estuary.”
MacDuffee says that when it comes to orca survival, all roads, or rather rivers, lead to salmon.
“We as humans have unravelled all the connections they have to salmon,” said MacDuffee. “Now, we’re at the point where more noise and more distraction is just taking more food away from these whales.”
Noise from industry and tanker travel messes with the whale’s ability to communicate clearly. MacDuffee explains that each pod within the clan has different communications calls. Those slight variations in sounds and sequences are needed to hunt, and to help females find and breed with a male member of another pod.
MacDuffee’s piece also points out the “amazing” cultural and biological parallels between humans and whales. In doing so, she enforces our deep draw to these amazing creatures.
For instance, we live to be about the same ages and the female orcas go through menopause. While they’re not breeding anymore, they are still hugely important to the survival of their family unit.
“When Granny, the matriarch of J pod (a Southern Resident killer whale family group) died in 2016, she was believed to be more than 90 years old and she hadn’t had a calf in more than 50 years,” MacDuffee wrote in her essay.
“The researchers who viewed hundreds of hours of video footage found that, in years when salmon abundance was low, the movements of whales were led by the post-reproductive females, for these were the whales with the greatest knowledge of where to look for salmon. The grandmothers are the repositories of ecological knowledge.”
During her self-isolating time at home, MacDuffee has noticed the clear sound of the whales blowing as they swam in the Salish Sea below her house. She hopes the overall quieting of the world will make us more aware, and in turn respectful, of what’s living around us.
“I just hear so many people saying, ‘Wow I hear the birds, the skies are so clear.’ I’m not listening to traffic and airplanes, this is an incredible experience,” said MacDuffee.
“I have heard people say that they want to get out of lockdown, but they don’t want to go back into the world it was before this happened. They want a different relationship with their communities and with the planet.”
This new book reads like a step in that direction, as it uncovers so many different ways to look at orca and appreciate a world in which they exist.
“It is my profound hope this book will not be a eulogy, but a celebration, a call to action, an invitation to fall in love with our magnificent kin: the orca whales,” Sanchez writes in the introduction to Spirits of the Coast.
Now that’s an invitation we can all accept.