Читать книгу The Killer Whale Who Changed the World - Mark Leiren-Young - Страница 10

CHAPTER FOUR

A LIVING NIGHTMARE

“Since the whale in question is the strongest, bloodthirstiest, most unpredictable creature in the seven seas, the party could get rough. We’re after Orcinus Orca, better known as the killer whale, the only creature other than dear old Homo Sapiens, which kills for the sheer lust of killing.”

JACK SCOTT, VANCOUVER SUN, JUNE 2, 1964

IF YOU WANT to harpoon a killer whale from the safety of the shore, there is almost no better place on the planet than the northeast tip of Saturna Island, known as East Point. For as long as anyone can remember, orcas have gathered year round off Canada’s southernmost Gulf Island, not far from the edge of the imaginary line in the Pacific Ocean that has marked the Canada-U.S. border since 1872.

In 1964, most of the hundred or so inhabitants of this small hilly island lived on the other side, roughly fifty miles away, near the ferry terminal at Lyall Harbour. The only connection between East Point and the rest of Saturna was a rugged dirt road. Almost no one lived here except the two lighthouse keepers and their families and the past lighthouse keeper and his wife, who’d recently built themselves a small retirement home.

Beyond the cliff, just before the notorious Boiling Reef, which was the reason for the lighthouse, there was a thirty-seven-fathom drop. In addition to being a hazard to boaters, the reef is a resting area for the roaring Steller (or northern) sea lions, which can grow more than ten feet long and weigh more than 2,500 pounds. Steller babies—and the seals that share their resting spot—are a favorite food of transient killer whales.

The lighthouse—really more of a light tower—with the houses nearby, was surrounded by lush green grass that looked like perfect grazing territory for the island’s wild sheep. In the spring of 1964, Sun writer Jack Scott said that the grass was blanketed with flaming orange California poppies. He described the whaler’s campground as “so theatrical in appearance . . . as looking like a bad set for an improbable movie.”

Saturna was “discovered”—as white folks used to say—in 1791, when a legendary Spanish schooner, the Santa Saturnina (believed to be the first European vessel constructed in North America), was exploring and charting the Gulf Islands. In 1869, the first British settler, Peter Frazier, set up a homestead, paying the Crown one pound per acre. The Salish knew the island as Tekteksen, which means “long nose”—a reference to the shape of East Point.

On May 20, the aquarium’s intrepid team arrived at the long nose in boats and floatplanes. The men were starting to get their bearings when Vince Penfold spotted a pod of killer whales arriving to greet them. It was 6 AM, and it looked like their adventure might be over before breakfast.

This wasn’t a big surprise; the hunt was expected to take less than a week. The whalers raced to the bluff, but the whales were gone before Sparrow’s gun could be mounted. Although they never got to take their shot, everyone was thrilled. The whales were here.

Pete Fletcher knew the best place to set the harpoon—on the sandstone platform he and June called “the water sample rock.” Every day, one of them stepped onto the stone at the edge of the water and dipped a cedar pole with a thermometer and collection bottle attached into the ocean to check temperature and salinity. Samples were sent to the Department of Fisheries, where scientists hoped to learn more about the habits of the salmon stocks that frequented these waters. While the Fletchers collected their samples, they’d often see killer whales surfacing, sometimes almost too close for comfort.

Sparrow and his crew covered the rock with a thick wooden plank and attached the harpoon gun. The recoil from a few early test rounds confirmed that it needed to be secured more carefully. The men collected large stones to weigh down the platform, and then anchored it with a series of chains. The harpoon had the same effect as it had on Sparrow’s boat. No whales appeared. During the four previous summers, there had never been a week without a whale sighting. The aquarium had a chance at landing their whale a few hours after arriving, but the hours became days, then weeks.

While everyone was waiting to catch their specimen, the captain of the Chilco Post used a hydrophone to collect the strange sounds of the killers that weren’t venturing close enough to be shot. The coast guard was experimenting with audio recordings in the hope that playing the apex predator’s cries would frighten the sea lions away from valuable salmon.

One afternoon, the Post pulled close enough to the camp to share the recordings over a loudspeaker. Everyone was startled by the symmetry and rhythm of the squeaks and squeals. There were patterns that sounded like calls and responses, an almost musical structure that seemed less like random noise than language. Could these creatures be communicating with each other? Perhaps that first whale the men had hoped to harpoon had spread the word about the island’s dangerous new visitors.

While they waited for their prey, Sparrow trained Burich to load and fire the harpoon. The two practiced by shooting at a raft towed by the Post, but they missed their mark more often than they hit it. Finally, a pod of whales appeared. Burich raced to the harpoon, picked his victim, lined up the shot, fired, and watched as the steel spike and nylon tail whistled over the killer’s back.

The would-be model responded with a leap and a dive. Then the pod swam off, toward a part of the ocean where they wouldn’t be disturbed. When Canada’s fisheries minister, James Sinclair, arrived to survey the operation and watched the whalers practice shooting, he left the island convinced they’d never hook a whale.

On June 2, Scott’s column in the Sun described the scene: “Our intrepid leader here is Dr. Murray A. Newman. It frightens me to think what will happen to Murray if the hunt fails. I see him as an old, old geezer, roaming the oceans of the world, cursing and shaking his gnarled fist at the empty waves. The way things are going, I may be right there with him. Whale hunting gets in your blood, I tell you, especially when you don’t get any.” Newman and Scott both mused that perhaps these whales had a sixth sense that alerted them to danger.

Only one whale ventured so close to the harpoon gun that it would have been almost impossible to miss—a jet-black minke who seemed fascinated by the hunting party. But minkes weren’t killer whales—nor were they known as killers. They were, however, killer whale food. “We call her ‘Minnie,’” wrote Scott. “It’s a safe bet that no one has ever been this affectionate toward Orcinus orca.” The whalers had a pet whale.

A few days after Scott’s column was published, Sparrow had smaller fish to fry. He couldn’t afford to miss halibut season and left the Gulf Islands to head out for the Bering Sea. Burich would now be the executioner. Newman and Penfold left too, along with the rest of the aquarium staff and the media. Newman recruited one of the aquarium’s original volunteers, Joe Bauer, to work with Burich.

Bauer had been fishing since his childhood—first in Germany, which his family had made the mistake of visiting just as World War II broke out, leading to his father’s internment at Dachau because of his anti-Nazi sentiments; then at a refugee camp in Scotland, where an old Gaelic fisherman taught him how to fish for herring; and later in Canada, where he studied fishing and net-making with First Nations fishermen. “I used to fish oolichans [candlefish] and was mentored by the Musqueam, the Stó:lō, and Tsawwassen bands,” says Bauer. “They taught me a lot about respecting nature and working with nature rather than trying to dictate and control it.” He was also taught to honor elders, offering them the pick of every catch. As a result of his respect for these traditions, as an adult Bauer was formally adopted by a Nisga’a family and received full First Nations status—including fishing rights—which he never used.

As a high school student in Steveston, a fishing and canning town just outside of Vancouver, Bauer collected exotic local fish for himself, then for the small aquarium run by UBC. His personal collection was almost as impressive as the university’s; he had thirty tanks at home. “I had species UBC didn’t even know existed,” he says. UBC professor Dr. Wilbert Clemens was so impressed by the self-taught prodigy that Bauer became an aquarium fixture before there was an aquarium and was declared a lifetime member in 1956, while he was still in high school. Unable to afford university, Bauer worked as a fisherman but spent his spare time volunteering for Clemens and, later, Newman.

When the whaling expedition launched, the twenty-five-year-old Bauer was a diver and diving instructor (students included future Canadian environmental icon David Suzuki) and regularly helped the Canadian coast guard on rescue missions.

Bauer arrived on Saturna to search for other species for the aquarium and assist with the expedition, if necessary. He also brought a camera to chronicle the adventures. He knew Sparrow and Burich because they’d crossed paths as fishermen. It might be a big ocean, but it was a small community.

AFTER TEN DAYS, the coast guard crew left in response to reports of Russian whalers near the Queen Charlotte Islands (now known as Haida Gwaii), where they were believed to be venturing inside the three-mile fishing limit in their quest for whales much more valuable than killers.

Suddenly, Canada’s biggest whale news was that Russians might harpoon the B.C. economy. Lorne Hume, general manager of Western Canadian Whaling, warned that local whalers could lose up to $2 million if the Soviets weren’t stopped. They had four or five times as many boats as Hume had, as well as floating factory ships that allowed them to render whales on the water. According to Hume, “this could lead to a situation similar to that existing in Antarctica which has been so overhunted that whale biologists believe it will take 50 years for whales in that area to return to the number they were at before the Second World War.” The Department of Fisheries sent a boat to photograph the Soviets to make sure they weren’t violating international borders by killing whales that only Canadians were supposed to kill.

The circus had left Saturna. Only Burich and Bauer remained— and there were no killer whales in sight. It was as if the whales had read Scott’s stories and decided to remove Saturna from their feeding route. Killer whales were spotted on May 22, 24, 26, and 28, but no new whales came close enough to shore to shoot. For almost an entire month—between May 28 and June 25—there were no sightings at all.

To fill the time, Burich taught Bauer how to use the harpoon and how to carve. The two amused themselves by etching their own twentieth-century petroglyphs of whales and whalers into the flat stones near their camp. They also made a flag displaying a killer whale and flew it over their tent. And they built a pen in a nearby bay where they could study the body of their whale after they caught and killed it, so that Bauer could take the photos and measurements.

For weeks, Burich played his harmonica, sculpted, and scraped images into the sandstone, while Bauer watched the water for whales and other species and collected a few exotic specimens for the aquarium’s displays. They were both fishermen, so they knew how to wait or, to use the term preferred by fishermen, fish. Burich and Bauer would occasionally visit the Fletchers for company and the use of their shower.

ON JULY 15, after almost two months of waiting, Newman contacted Burich via ship-to-shore radio to call it a day. His whale hunt had become a snipe hunt. Instead of the pods of fifty-plus killers that had been recorded over the previous four years, only eight pods—a mere sixty whales—had been seen during Burich’s fifty-seven days on the island. And whale season was winding down.

Burich still wanted his whale. His sculpture would be a tourist attraction that everyone in Vancouver and visitors from around the world would see. And, perhaps more importantly, he didn’t want to let Newman down. But maybe Newman was right and the creatures could sense danger. After eight weeks, Burich agreed that it was time to abandon the quest.

That night, the Fletchers invited Burich and Bauer for a farewell dinner, and Pete broke out the homemade sake he’d been brewing. After a long night of swapping stories and sampling the potent rice wine, Burich and Bauer returned to their tent.

When they woke the morning of July 16, not only were both men hungover, they were cold. The hot summer weather had been replaced with an unseasonal chill, and the waves were choppy. For the first time since arriving, Burich and Bauer put on their coats as they prepared for their last breakfast on Saturna. It was a good time to be going.

Bauer had stopped shaving while he was on the island—he’d mentioned that he was a fan of Burich’s fisherman’s beard—but he wanted to clean up before returning home to his girlfriend. Burich, who looked like Ernest Hemingway in his bullfighting prime, decided his friend should keep the beard, grabbed Bauer’s shaving gear, and hurled it off the cliff. “You want a shave,” laughed Burich. “Go dive for it.”

As Burich returned to their tent to finish packing and take down their flag, Bauer walked to the edge of the cliff to see where his shaving gear landed. It was sinking into the water—thirty-seven fathoms deep.

It was a good thing his girlfriend wasn’t a fan of beards. “As I was standing there I see a group of whales coming right to where our harpoon gun was and I said, ‘Sam, I think we’ve got a chance to get a whale.’”

Burich didn’t even look outside the tent as he replied, “Bullshit.”

There was no time to argue.

Bauer ran down to the harpoon gun, filled it with gunpowder, stuffed in the capping, loaded the harpoon, and took aim. That’s when Burich raced down the hill with Bauer’s gear. “He’s got my camera,” says Bauer, “and he says ‘I can’t use this shit.’” Bauer, who was equally reluctant to use the harpoon, took his camera and scrambled for the perfect spot to shoot the scene. Burich scrambled for a spot to shoot the whale.

After weeks of practice, this was only Burich’s second encounter with a live target—but that was one more shot than Bauer had taken.

The bigger whales seemed to sense trouble and swam just beyond the range of the harpoon. But one of the smaller ones stayed closer to shore and seemed to meet Burich’s gaze.

Burich knew he could hit this beast. He had no choice. He braced for the recoil from the forty-two-gram gunpowder charge, aimed at the waterline slightly ahead of the small whale, and pulled the trigger. Then the whale disappeared into the water. Burich was devastated. He reached for the line and started to haul it back in.

Bauer, who was perched on the bluff below, had a better view. Burich had hooked a whale.

Burich was sure Bauer was wrong, but Bauer was certain he’d seen the harpoon hit the killer. No matter what Bauer said, Burich wasn’t convinced. He knew he’d missed.

When they pulled at the line, it seemed heavier than usual, almost taut. The debate was settled when the orange floats attached to it began flying toward the ocean. As the Scotchmen hit the water, there was no doubt—they had a whale on the hook. Burich shouted in triumph, “Oh my God, you’re right.” Their ears still ringing from the blast, the whalers sprinted to their boat, the Corsair 2.

Meanwhile, the lighthouse keepers shared the news with their fellow islanders. Everyone had been waiting for this moment—they all wanted to see the aquarium catch the creature. Roughly two dozen men, women, and children raced to East Point to see the dead whale. Some gathered on the beach, some arrived in small boats, and it seemed that all the men had rifles. “I never realized there were so many .303s on Saturna Island,” says Bauer. “All of the sudden, the beach was full with all these people with all these guns.”

Plan A was to kill the whale with a single shot from the harpoon, then drag the carcass to the pen.

It was time for Plan B—for Burich to shoot the orca with his rifle. If the harpoon hadn’t killed it, his bullets would. The men watched in astonishment as the whale appeared. It wasn’t moving—but two larger whales were holding it gingerly, keeping it afloat.

Burich and Bauer couldn’t believe what they were seeing. When the American soldiers slaughtered whales in Iceland, they saw healthy whales approaching bloody ones and assumed they were arriving to tear their family members to shreds and feast on their remains. But instead of surfacing with strips of flesh in their mouths, these killers were supporting the injured whale. Instead of savagery, Burich and Bauer were witnessing compassion, empathy. Suddenly, the definitive killer whale textbooks had all the scientific value of King Kong.