Читать книгу The Killer Whale Who Changed the World - Mark Leiren-Young - Страница 7

CHAPTER ONE

THE SEA BEAST

“Most whales, dolphins and porpoises are peaceful creatures. They have to eat to live, but otherwise they harm neither their oceanic neighbours nor man, unless bothered or injured. How different the orca, which seems to be filled with a burning hatred! Nothing that lives or moves in or on the water is safe from its assaults. Its size, power, speed, agility and disposition have made this black monster greatly feared wherever it is known. As the name Orcinus orca implies, it belongs to ‘the kingdom of the dead.’”

JOSEPH J. COOK AND WILLIAM L. WISNER, KILLER WHALE!

WHEN SAMUEL BURICH fired his harpoon, everyone knew killer whales were monsters. The bad press for the species started with the Old Testament’s scariest sermon—Jonah and the whale. In the first century, Roman historian Pliny the Elder described killer whales as “loathsome, pig-eyed assassins,” and warned that “a killer whale cannot be properly depicted or described except as an enormous mass of flesh armed with savage teeth.”

In 1758, Carolus Linnaeus, the Swedish naturalist who developed taxonomy, dubbed the creatures Orcinus orca in his Systema Naturae. The origin of the name depends on whether you believe the root comes from Orcus (Rome’s god of death or the underworld) or ork (from the French term orque, which was used to describe sea monsters long before it became the name of the villains in The Lord of the Rings). Whichever version you prefer, the Latin translates as “of or belonging to the kingdom of the dead,” “bringer of death,” or “devil whale.”

In 1874, American naturalist Captain Charles Scammon warned that “in whatever quarter of the world [killer whales] are found, they seem always intent upon seeking something to destroy or devour.”

The Haida people of British Columbia dubbed killer whales skana, which translates as “killer demon—supernatural power.” Alaska’s Aleut called them polossatik—“the feared one.” First Nations opinions about killer whales varied, probably based on which whales they encountered, but whether they viewed the creatures as potentially dangerous spirits (as the Haida did) or reincarnations of their ancestors (like the Nuu-chah-nulth), the First Nations in North America respected them as intelligent beings who ruled the ocean just as humans ruled the land.

The German term Mörderwal translates as “whale-murderer.” Basque fishermen called the creature ballena asesina—“assassin whale,” which may be the origin of the name killer whale. Both names were inspired by the orca’s penchant for hunting and feasting on other whales. All the names in every language conveyed the same warning—these creatures were deadly.

On Captain Robert F. Scott’s final Antarctic expedition, in 1912, his men twice found themselves surrounded by killer whales and were convinced they were doomed. Scott’s photographer, Herbert Ponting, was on an ice floe with a team of “Eskimo dogs” when a group of whales began circling. He could see their tall triangular black fins and hear their breath through their blowholes—a sound he knew meant danger. For a photographer in love with the natural world, the scene must have been magical—until the attack.

The snow under Ponting’s feet began shaking, rocking, and cracking. The booming sound of the creatures ramming the ice floe beneath Ponting and his dog team filled the air. “Whale after whale rose under the ice, setting it rocking fiercely,” wrote Scott. “One after another their huge hideous heads shot vertically into the air through the cracks which they had made. As they reared them to a height of 6 or 8 feet it was possible to see their tawny head markings, their small glistening eyes, and their terrible array of teeth—by far the largest and most terrifying in the world.”

As the whales set their small glistening eyes on Ponting, he knew it was all over. But after surveying the man and his dogs, the whales vanished beneath the surface and swam off to look for their standard fare, probably seals.

The whales’ ingenious, methodical approach to hunting haunted Scott. “Of course, we have known well that killer whales continually skirt the edge of the floes and that they would undoubtedly snap up anyone who was unfortunate enough to fall into the water; but the facts that they could display such deliberate cunning, that they were able to break ice of such thickness (at least 2 ½ feet), and that they could act in unison, were a revelation to us.” It was a revelation he shared with the world.

Whales of all types became especially infamous courtesy of American author and whaler Herman Melville. His novel Moby-Dick; or, The Whale was released in 1851 to tepid and sometimes savage reviews and less than titanic sales. During Melville’s lifetime, Moby-Dick sold only 3,200 copies. It was the least successful of his six novels. But in the 1920s, thirty years after Melville’s death, Moby-Dick became a pop culture phenomenon, an icon and a synonym for whales and monsters after America’s silver screen heartthrob John Barrymore starred as a heroic Ahab in the 1926 silent movie The Sea Beast. The movie was such a hit that Barrymore revisited the role in a talkie version four years later that kept Melville’s name, Moby Dick.

Since the 1920s, Moby-Dick has been adapted and reinvented for every medium and almost every genre, making a splash on stage, radio, and screen. An epic exploration of obsession and madness, Moby-Dick is also a horror story about a savage, unpredictable, unstoppable force of nature. Courtesy of all the adaptations—and there are hundreds, ranging from comic books to sci-fi space operas—Moby-Dick did for whales what Jaws did for sharks almost a century later.

At the same time that Barrymore was battling the great white whale on-screen, American author Zane Grey wrote about the terror of seeing a killer whale up close. “The fact that my hands shook attested to the knowledge that I had acquired of peril on the sea. Even the veteran whale-hunters are afraid of orca.” Best known today as a prolific author of Western pulp fiction, Grey wrote more than a dozen books on fishing and warned his readers that “orca kill for the sake of killing. No doubt the Creator created them, the same as the sharks, to preserve a balance in the species of the Seven Seas—to teach all the larger fish and dolphin, seals, porpoises, that the price of life was eternal vigilance.” Grey also cautioned that “orca are the most ferocious and terrible of all the wolves of the sea. They are equally dangerous to man.”

The word “whale” was almost always synonymous with monster and interchangeable with giant. Many scientists say the killer isn’t technically a whale—it’s the largest member of the dolphin family (Delphinidae); pilot whales are the second largest—but the distinction isn’t that clear cut. Some experts on cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) flip the equation and don’t just group killers and pilots with the rest of the species but wonder if the porpoise should actually qualify as a small whale.

IN 1963, JUST before the Vancouver Aquarium’s expedition, a book entitled Killer Whale! presented the most up-to-date information on the creature Burich and Bauer were hired to hunt. The introduction by Dr. Ross F. Nigrelli, pathologist at the New York Aquarium, warns readers that “the fiercest, most terrifying animal in all the world lives in the sea, not on land. Lions, tigers and great bears are considered savage animals, but many times more powerful and far more vicious than any of these is the killer whale.”

Authors Joseph J. Cook and William L. Wisner explain that “from the beginning of time the killer whale has been feared wherever man has depended upon the ocean for food. To the Eskimo, the orca was the wolf of the sea because of its habit of hunting in packs. To the Pacific Northwest Indian, it was the fierce and fearless hunter of the open waters.”

The authors offer a collection of terrifying tales about ornery orcas, describing an attack in the Antarctic where several boats were pursued by “a pack of killer whales.” The writers report that “the men were able to reach the edge of a nearby ice floe, abandon their craft, and flee to safety on foot. There probably have been many instances where men were not so fortunate. No doubt seal hunters, Eskimos and others traveling alone on the ice have been captured by orcas with no witnesses to tell of their fate.”

Moving to the other side of the world, they share the account of “an enraged bull orca” ramming and shattering a twenty-five-foot fishing boat off the coast of South Africa before devouring four fishermen.

The book concludes with a chapter titled “A Living Nightmare” that begins on the ominous note, “This is the true story of five fishermen...”According to this “true story,” five men harpooned what they thought was a shark near Long Island, New York, but discovered they’d caught something far more terrifying. The hunter was so scared he dropped his end of the harpoon. “For the first time he saw the animal’s evil eyes, the large mouth, the telltale curving patch of white behind the eyes. All at once he knew that a dreaded killer whale was within touching distance!” Not surprisingly, the fishermen survived to tell the tale.

U.S. Navy diving manuals warned that if their fearless warriors found themselves confronted by a killer whale, it was time to get out of the water to avoid being attacked by “a ruthless and ferocious beast.” Naval officers stationed in the Antarctic were advised that killers “will attack human beings at every opportunity.”

Killer whales weren’t just considered dangerous but also useless. In an age when whales were judged by how easy it was to render them into oil, or grind them into pet food and fertilizer, killer whales were a problem even if they weren’t killing humans. Whether killer whales are officially considered whales might be interesting to taxonomy buffs, but to fishermen all that mattered was that orcas aren’t built like other whales, which made them unappealing to catch. They have less blubber and almost no oil. They also have teeth instead of versatile and valuable baleen. Whales that eat plankton—baleens— have a sophisticated strainer system made of pliable keratin (like human hair and finger nails). That strainer—the baleen, or “whale-bone”—was used like preindustrial plastic to make corsets, buggy whips, and umbrellas.

The Japanese ate killer whales, but the Japanese ate pretty much anything they could find in the ocean. No one in North America developed a yen for killer whales. So fishermen were not impressed by creatures that devoured the same food we did. But that’s what rifles were for. Fishermen around the world regularly took shots at the pests North Americans nicknamed blackfish, thrashers, and sea devils.

In 1956, the government of Iceland asked a U.S. naval crew stationed at its NATO base to cull the killer whale population in order to save their precious herring. Time, the era’s dominant newsmagazine, reported on the mission to slaughter the “savage sea cannibals,” which were described as “up to 30 ft. long and with teeth like bayonets.”

The unnamed Time correspondent wrote that

this year the largest packs of killer whales in living memory terrorized the seas off Iceland. They destroyed thousands of dollars worth of fishing tackle, forced dozens of Icelanders out of work for lack of gear. Last week the Icelandic government appealed to the U.S., which has thousands of men stationed at a lonely NATO airbase on the subarctic island. Seventy-nine bored G.I.s responded with enthusiasm. Armed with rifles and machine guns, one posse of Americans climbed into four small boats, put to sea and in one morning wiped out a pack of 100 killers. A newsman watched an even bigger skirmish off Grindavik and related: “First, the killers were rounded up into a tight formation with concentrated machine-gun fire, then moved out again, one by one, for the final blast which would kill them. Other whales helped the troops, for as one was wounded, the others would set upon it and tear it to pieces with their jagged teeth. The sea was red with blood. The scene of destruction was terrible. I have never seen anything like it.”

But before the readers could get the mistaken impression that anything untoward had happened in this war against whales, the article concluded on a cheery note: “It was all very tough on the whales,” reported the newsman, “but very good for American-Icelandic relations.”

THE FIRST TIME a savage sea cannibal was captured by humans was in 1961. A group from the world’s first major commercial aquarium— Marineland of the Pacific—caught a killer whale in California.

Marineland was created in 1938, when movie producers set up a tank outside St. Augustine, Florida, to shoot undersea adventure movies. After capturing a bottlenose dolphin to headline their films, the owners were shocked when an estimated twenty thousand visitors arrived to meet the star. People were more excited to see the dolphins offscreen than on, so instead of shooting movies, Marine Studios decided to charge admission and the idea of a commercial “oceanarium” was born. The accidental tourist trap became Marineland of Florida, complete with the Marineland Motel, Sandpiper Snackbar, and Moby Dick Lounge. And they still managed to make a few movies, including Creature from the Black Lagoon.

In 1954, the idea of an aquarium with big stars went Hollywood with the launch of a second location, Marineland of the Pacific, in Los Angeles. After several failed attempts, the L.A. branch captured its first whale in 1957, when the director of collections, Frank Brocato, and his right-hand fisherman and godson, Frank “Boots” Calandrino, collected a pilot whale. They equipped their thirty-seven-foot gill-netter (the Geronimo) with a cowboy contraption consisting of a net, a lasso, and a platform attached to the bow that allowed them to rope their catch.

On February 27, 1957, they tracked a small pilot whale just off Santa Catalina Island, in California. After dodging their snare for nearly six hours—and taking several runs at the boat—the twelve-foot female was caught, positioned on her back on an inflatable raft, and towed to shore. California’s children were invited to name the prize exhibit, and the world’s first captive pilot whale was dubbed Bubbles. Hollywood’s biggest star was born—and so was the model for future marine parks.

The Franks soon captured another pilot to serve as an understudy for the role of Bubbles, thus establishing the tradition (followed by SeaWorld with Shamu) that captive whales are immortal. The first Bubbles choked to death on a rubber ring less than two years after being placed on display.

But pilots were just whales; killer whales were monsters.

No one tried to capture a killer until November 17, 1961, when a lone whale was spotted in California’s Newport Harbor. Based on the size and shape of the dorsal fin, the capture crew from Marineland was certain that the killer was female.

The next morning, determined to land the ultimate catch, the two Franks and their crew arrived at the harbor on the Geronimo. After several hours of chasing the killer, the crew members realized their lasso wouldn’t work and switched to a 1,200-foot-long, 75-foot-deep nylon net. They easily scooped up the whale, but it tore through the mesh almost immediately. After quickly repairing and reinforcing the net, they decided to try again.

An estimated eight thousand people standing on the shore and curious onlookers from roughly fifty nearby boats watched the capture. But not everyone was rooting for the whalers. Americans have always been fans of outlaws on the run, and the audience on the beach cheered whenever the whale dodged its would-be captors and when one of the hunters fell into the water.

After more than eight hours of high-stakes hide-and-seek, the hunters once again netted the whale. This time, their exhausted captive, whom they’d nicknamed Wanda, wasn’t going anywhere. The men maneuvered Wanda onto an inflatable raft, as they’d done with Bubbles 1 and 2, and after reaching the shore, they transferred her into a tank on a flatbed truck and drove to Marineland.

Wanda’s stay at Marineland didn’t last long. According to the official report on the whale, which was referred to as the Newport Specimen:

Upon being placed into the 100 by 50 by 19-foot oval fish tank at approximately 10:00 PM, the whale initially struck her snout a glancing blow on one of the walls. She then commenced to swim slowly around the confines of the tank, her behavior being similar to that of newly-introduced smaller delphinids. The following morning, the whale was observed holding a newly-killed ocean sunfish in her mouth. This fish was not consumed, however, and during the remainder of the day many attempts were made to induce feeding. Marineland divers attached lines to bonita, and “worried” the killer whale with these as she slowly encircled the enclosure. The animal made several attempts to bite the food and it was at this time that the worn condition of her teeth was first observed. At 8:30 AM on 20 November, the whale became violent and after encircling the tank at great speed and striking her body on several occasions, she finally swam into a flume way, convulsed and expired.

According to the Marineland report, the dead whale weighed just under twenty thousand pounds and was more than seventeen feet long. This seems unlikely, since that would make Wanda the heaviest female orca ever reported—but she was clearly a big whale.

That same morning, pathologists from the Los Angeles County Livestock Department performed a necropsy and determined that Wanda had died of acute gastroenteritis and pneumonia. They also found signs of advanced atherosclerosis and concluded that the stress of the capture and confinement probably contributed to her death. Their report also noted that Wanda’s brain weighed almost ten pounds and was very highly developed.

Brocato’s recollection of Wanda’s demise was more dramatic. “She went crazy,” he told reporters. “She started swimming at high speed around the tank, striking her body repeatedly.” After less than forty-eight hours, the world’s first captive killer whale was dead. But catching a killer whale no longer seemed impossible. The Franks knew they could net another one, and this time they’d find a healthy orca, ideally a juvenile—a whale that could grow up in captivity, a whale they could train to do tricks.

On their first attempt at killer whale hunting, they almost landed a baby. The Franks spotted a calf, roped it, and were ready to reel in their catch when the other members of the pod turned to face them and lined up side by side in what the hunters believed was a military-style attack formation. Rather than risk being charged by an orca army, they set their captive free.

The next time they were ready. They had the gear to catch a whale—and the weapons to protect themselves. They outfitted the Geronimo for a trip up the Pacific and arrived off the coast of Vancouver in the summer of 1962. Brocato still had his sights set on a juvenile, but just in case an angry mother or killer whale army attacked, he’d packed a “high powered cannon.” Local experts, including Vancouver Aquarium director Dr. Murray Newman, were convinced the whale hunters from Hollywood were risking their lives.

Brocato and Calandrino picked Point Roberts, Washington—a small fishing community just on the U.S. side of the border, roughly fifteen nautical miles away from Saturna Island—as their ideal hunting grounds. The whales might not recognize the imaginary line in the water indicating the international boundary, but Canadian officials would, so the Americans were going to catch a killer on their side of the border to avoid becoming entangled in any political nets.

On September 16, after two months of searching for their prey, the whalers spotted what they believed was a female killer chasing a porpoise. Brocato told Calandrino to watch the porpoise and treat it like bait. The porpoise saw the boat and decided to treat it like an escape route. As the whales focused on the porpoise, Calandrino easily roped his killer—just like he’d caught dozens of dolphins.

But the whale cut underneath the boat, wrapped the 250-foot line around the propeller and then surfaced 200 feet away. “As it emitted shrill shrieks a bull orca rose alongside it—both rushed The Geronimo, striking it with their flanks.” At least that was how the hunters reported the incident. Whether the whales struck the boat or whether they were chasing the porpoise and the waves rocked the boat and spooked the men, the result was the same. Fearing for his life, Brocato took out his .357 Magnum rifle and pumped ten bullets into the female and one into the male. Moments later, the waters off Point Roberts were red with blood. The dead female killer was floating beside them; the male was gone. The great expedition was over. And the killer whale’s reputation as an unpredictable beast, ready and able to destroy anything in its domain, was not only intact but enhanced. The men who caught pilot whales told the world that the killer whales had almost killed them.

The Geronimo hauled the female’s corpse back to the American port town of Bellingham, where they weighed and measured their catch, which was reported as twenty-three feet long and more than 35,000 pounds (an extreme size estimate that also seems slightly fishy). Brocato kept the sharp teeth as souvenirs. The whale’s remains became dog food. The most experienced whale wranglers on the planet were finished chasing killers. They were far too dangerous to capture, and they were clearly impossible to exhibit.