WHALE OF A TALE SKETCHES OUT SHIFT FROM ASSASSIN TO ORCA
Story tells of Moby Doll and a sea change in public attitudes, writes Jules Torti.
In 1996, Mark Leiren-Young entered headlong into an unexpected love affair while innocently writing an expose on cetaceans in captivity at the Vancouver Aquarium. An interview with “whale warrior” Paul Watson (Greenpeace’s founding father) spurred the journalist to become entrenched in all things killer whale.
The Killer Whale Who Changed the World is the result of his twodecade relationship researching the blackfish, in particular, the icon of the species, Moby Doll. Moby’s introduction to the curious and still fearful public flipped the reputation of the killer whale into the softer, empathetic orca.
The Vancouver Aquarium was the first place to introduce a killer whale to the world and, in tandem, became the first aquarium to declare it would no longer capture cetaceans in the wild. The 50th anniversary of the historic 1964 hunt that LeirenYoung dissects is a full circle chunk of human and orca history, whaling, the whale-watching industry and the health of our oceans. In turn he illuminates the evolution of captive whales from entertainers to educators.
The author of a CBC Ideas radio documentary on the same subject and the memoir Never Shoot a Stampede Queen’s latest passion project is a raw examination of the “sea wolves” long typecast as “loathsome pig-eyed assassins.” The cannibals of the sea were useless to mankind, with less blubber and virtually no oil in comparison to other whales. Air force pilots were encouraged to use them as target practice. Naval crews culled them to save herring populations, often killing a hundred sea devils in just one morning.
The book treads water around the capture of Moby Doll by stone carver Samuel Burich and fellow wrangler Joe Bauer, with a steady feed of quotes from Herman Melville’s novel, Moby Dick (released in 1851, it sold only 3,200 copies in his lifetime). Celluloid pop stars like Free Willy and aquarium nostalgia (admission to the Vancouver Aquarium was 25 cents when it opened in 1956) fill the pages with share-worthy oceanic trivia.
Leiren-Young tracks the transition of the ocean’s apex predator from Jaws-like fear factor to recent fame. There are Twitter feeds dedicated to B.C.’s southern residents. Every orca in J, K and L pods has his or her own Facebook fan page. The Canadian government has listening stations in the Salish Sea recording orca conversations. They’re trending! Despite the love-in, whales are still the most PCB-contaminated mammals on the planet, their dead bodies often considered as chemical waste.
The book’s momentum is in the re-telling of Moby Doll’s capture though. Burich and Bauer, “ironically the two men who braved the elements for 10 weeks trying to kill a killer” also battled “a choppy sea, blinding squalls and darkness to save their victim’s life.”
For chronic Vancouver Sun subscribers, the chapters are colourful patchwork quilts of excerpts from reporters on the beat at the time.
The failed execution attempt of Moby Doll (whose carcass was to provide a life-like model for Burich to sculpt a fibreglass and plaster model for display at the aquarium) was the first heartrending observation of empathy witnessed in the species. Two orcas were seen trying to help their injured pod mate as he was towed toward shore “like a puppy on a leash.”
The Killer Whale Who Changed the World highlights the instrumental players credited for debunking the reputation of orcas as heartless monsters. The kind of predator that would “peel the skin off their prey” and discard it, “as if they’re snacking on bananas.”
Placed on Canada’s endangered species list in 2001, titans of the “orcaholic” world like the Vancouver Aquarium’s director Murray Newman recognized the invaluable nature of a live whale versus a dead one. Over 20,000 came to see “Newman’s whale” in dry dock, the same number that attended a Beatles concert in Vancouver a few months later. Moby Doll was like an alien, like King Kong. But, “the wolf of the sea had become the ocean’s cuddly kitty.”
Every individual involved in Moby Doll’s story is knit in.
There is six-year-old Wanda Robinson who wrote a letter to the editor and gave a $2 fundraising donation (from a basement carnival) to support the whale. And Maisie Hurley, a 76-year-old, ripe with prophecies who suggested if Moby wasn’t released, disaster would befall Vancouver.
Leiren-Young puts it all out there, without censor. From the botched harpooning mission of Moby to present day. There’s a stiff reminder that orcas are our “canaries in the coal mine.” He triggers, pressing all the right soft spots. Why do we still get first dibs on all the fish in the sea over resident whales to satisfy our sushi fix? There’s a reminder of our carelessness — seen in the swirling islands of decomposing plastic in our oceans (thought to be bigger than the continental U.S.).
It’s difficult to absorb the death of Moby Doll. However, the era of sea cowboys harpooning pods from helicopters gave way to the surge of animal rights advocacy. The author easily manufactures outrage by chronicling the Moby Doll’s last days and death from suffocation. A recount of the wild whales that clustered around her pen will move the most granite of hearts. His tribute is a compelling compendium and a love letter to a threatened population that deserves your attention and affection.