Читать книгу The Killer Whale Who Changed the World - Mark Leiren-Young - Страница 9

CHAPTER THREE

CANADA’S CAPTAIN AHAB

“Dr. Newman combines the best qualities of Louis Pasteur and P.T. Barnum. He is a unique public servant in that he has the complete respect and recognition of his professional colleagues all over North America and at the same time has managed to appeal to the public fancy.”

JACK WASSERMAN, VANCOUVER SUN, 1963

THE VANCOUVER AQUARIUM was expanding, and Murray Newman wanted a star attraction. Marineland’s director had warned Newman about their catastrophic expedition, so he knew that killer whales were too dangerous to capture. But Newman’s dream was to feature local marine life in his aquarium, and he considered the killer whale not just the most impressive aquatic specimen in his part of the world but “the most magnificent of all living creatures.”

On a tour of Europe in 1960, Newman had visited the British Natural History Museum and was enchanted by its life-sized models— elephants, a great white shark, and, best of all, a hall of whales, which included both the skeleton and a replica of a blue whale. Newman wanted his own whale, but unlike the statues in London, he wanted his model to be a perfect, anatomically accurate replica of the most feared predator on the planet. This would be scientifically significant—and it would scare the hell out of little kids. What more could any curator want from an exhibit?

Born in Chicago in 1924, Newman was a self-described “Depression boy.” His father had a prestigious publishing job and loved to hunt and fish as a hobby. Then the stock market crashed, and fishing and hunting became a way to feed the family.

“Dad loved trout for breakfast,” recalled Newman. “Dad also traded trout with a farmer in exchange for fruit and vegetables.” Ever the academic, Newman noted that his father’s favorite trout weren’t really trout. “They called them eastern brook trout, but they were really char.” While Dad angled for breakfast, young Murray lay on the ground watching the fish, studying them, and realized they were fighting. He founded his first aquarium while he was still in elementary school, when he bought a fishbowl from the dime store and regularly spent his allowance on the specimens they kept in the back room. He eventually saved enough money to buy his own tank and learned to care for the few fancy fish he could afford.

After a year at the University of Chicago as a science undergrad, Newman was drafted and joined the navy. One of his first postings was at the Battle of Bougainville in the Solomon Islands. His fondest memory? The tropical fish.

When his stint was over, he completed his degree, then earned a master’s in zoology from the University of California, Berkeley. His thesis focused on the behavior of trout—real trout, not the kind his dad had caught. Newman studied the same thing that had fascinated him when he watched his father fish—the way the tiny creatures fought for dominance. He was lured to Canada by fish stories about all of the unique types of trout in British Columbia waters.

Murray and his wife, Kathy, moved to Vancouver, where Newman was awarded the first ever H.R. MacMillan Fellowship in fisheries to help fund his PhD studies at the University of British Columbia. Newman’s life changed again when he met his scholarship’s patron— H.R. MacMillan. The Canadian lumber baron liked company on his 137-foot converted minesweeper, the Marijean. Sometimes he’d take friends—the most powerful men in the province—and catch fish for sport. Sometimes he’d take scientists and catch specimens. Sometimes he’d take both. Newman became MacMillan’s go-to naturalist for the next dozen years. MacMillan became Newman’s friend and patron, and Newman soon found himself on a first-name basis with the province’s powerbrokers.

In 1955, Newman was appointed head of the Vancouver Public Aquarium. It was more of a concept than an institution, but it came with $300,000 in funding commitments from various levels of governments. Newman became the first employee of Canada’s first ever public aquarium, and it was his job to create . . . something.

Although Newman’s UBC mentors were keen on their student’s candidacy, some board members wanted a flashier figure to spearhead the city’s new tourist attraction. Already balding at thirty-one, with a slow Midwestern drawl, Newman looked and sounded like a lab nerd—an ichthyologist, not an impresario. But despite his scientific demeanor, Newman was an explorer at heart—always happy to jump into new adventures, preferably when he was in his diving gear, ideally with his wife, Kathy, beside him.

THE AQUARIUM OPENED on June 15, 1956. Admission for adults was twenty-five cents. In the first two days more than 10,000 visitors showed up. By the end of the first year, 342,870 people had passed through the turnstiles. Since the population of Vancouver was only 344,833, Newman celebrated the aquarium’s first anniversary with a press release joking that “if you are one of those 1,963 unlucky Vancouverites who did not get around to see the fish in 1957, perhaps you will be able to make it in 1958.” He also raised adult admission by a dime.

In 1963, Vancouver city council held a plebiscite to determine whether residents were prepared to pay $250,000 to expand the aquarium. The provincial and federal governments committed to matching the city’s contribution. Newspaper columnist Jack Wasserman, the voice of Vancouver, warned that if the aquarium didn’t expand, it wouldn’t be big enough to contain Newman’s ambitions, and the province couldn’t afford to let their curator go. “If we lose Murray Newman it will be a tragedy of the first magnitude. Even greater than if we lost the Premier.” Newman got his funding. It was time to play Ahab.

“I felt that a lot of the aquatic wildlife was savagely treated and the public should really know more about all of these different kinds of animals. So in planning an expansion I thought, wouldn’t it be marvelous if we could sort of symbolize the waters of British Columbia by having a perfect model of a killer whale.” Newman wanted a proper sculptor to craft this model. And to make sure the model wasn’t just attractive but also accurate, he was determined to kill a whale and then measure it in the water, while it maintained its size and shape. This level of concern for precision was positively cutting edge for the era.

The media was fascinated by the idea of an expedition to track “the marine world’s public enemy number one.” And in 1964, there was nothing controversial about hunting a killer whale, or pretty much anything else.

A few years earlier, Newman had made headlines when the aquarium caught and killed one of B.C.’s last basking sharks as the model for a similar sculpture. The second-largest fish in the world after the whale shark (real whales are mammals), basking sharks (Cetorhinus maximus) grow to forty feet in length, weigh up to ten thousand pounds, have huge mouths with tiny teeth, and pretty much all they do is bask. According to fossil records, they’ve been preying on plankton for about 30 million years. Most sharks are in perpetual motion, but basking sharks live like middle-aged tourists at an all-inclusive resort—they float in the water, waiting for food to show up. Their dream diet is krill (small crustaceans). The shark’s huge open mouth may look like a death trap, but the only way it would hurt a fly is if the fly flew in with dinner.

They are, however, extremely lethal to gill nets (and vice versa), and there were enough sharks basking in the mid-twentieth century that they used to be seen traveling in groups of up to a hundred off the Pacific coast. In other parts of the world, basking sharks were hunted—and rendered—like whales. The fish have oversized livers— up to a quarter of their considerable body weight—which means they’re rich in oil. Their skin can be used as leather, their cartilage is sold as medicine, and their remains made fine fish meal. But in 1948, B.C. fishermen lobbied the provincial government to place a bounty on the sharks. A year later, basking sharks were declared “destructive pests” and received the same government-sanctioned death warrant as black bears, seals, and sea lions. It was the job of Canada’s fisheries officers to kill these creatures on sight.

The Department of Fisheries turned one of their boats into a killing machine, equipping it with a retractable, triangular steel spike. When sharks were spotted, the Comox Post would race to the fishermen’s rescue and lower the blade at their bow to save the endangered gill nets by filleting the giant fish. The device spiked more than forty basking sharks in its first month of operation. The Victoria Daily News declared on June 22, 1955, that “since no commercial use has been found for the shark, their presence in a salmon school is a fisherman’s nightmare.” They were also considered a nightmare for the tourist industry. If their submersible skewer wasn’t handy, the Post followed the same protocol as other large vessels and intentionally rammed the sharks head on—also an effective method of murdering them. Meanwhile, Sunday fishermen happily harpooned the sharks. Some thrill-seekers used them as water skiing ramps and, quite literally, jumped the sharks.

Wildlife was just another limitless Canadian resource, like minerals and trees. The day Newman’s appointment as aquarium boss was announced in the Province, an ad on the same page featured a sketch of an adorable whale spouting water. The whale was the logo for “100% organic blue whale compost and soil conditioner.” Acme Peat Products promised that their whale meal—available “at all garden supply stores”—was “ideal for all phases of gardening and fine green lawns.”

Yes, Canadians loved whales—as fertilizer.

Newman asked the Department of Fisheries to approve his plan. The officials didn’t just offer their blessing but steered Newman toward someone who could shoot the whale and a scientist who could choose the best spot to set up the harpoon.

The whale expert was one of the men who’d inspired Newman to move to British Columbia—Ian McTaggart-Cowan. Now the head of UBC’s Zoology Department—and Canada’s first celebrity scientist (his CBC TV show Fur and Feathers launched in 1955 and set the table for Dr. David Suzuki’s long-running environmentally themed series The Nature of Things)—McTaggart-Cowan suggested the aquarium set up camp on Saturna. There was a spot on the island—East Point— where the water was so deep and the whales were able to swim so close to shore that McTaggart-Cowan hoped to build a research facility there.

For the previous four years, June Fletcher, wife of East Point’s assistant lighthouse keeper, Pete Fletcher, had kept a detailed record of how many whales, seals, and sea lions she saw each day. According to her records, it was rare for a summer day to go by without a pod approaching the shore, and some of those pods numbered fifty or more.

The aquarium’s board put $3000 toward the expedition, and a Vancouver charity offered another $1,000 to the cause. When the project was announced, the media was captivated by the idea of a whale hunt. “The killer whale is more abundant in B.C. waters than anywhere else—it is really a spectacular animal,” Newman told reporters before launching his sea safari. “He deserves to be called king of the beasts more than the lion. He could swallow an African lion whole. The public just isn’t aware of the magnificence of this animal. We want to emphasize and dramatize the whale by making it the primary exhibit in the foyer.”

Newman surprised everyone, especially himself, with his talent for showmanship. According to many people who worked with him, Newman’s greatest skill was making everyone feel not just needed but essential. Friends, colleagues, and coworkers—and the labels tended to be interchangeable—all claimed that Newman had honed helplessness to an art form. He never simply asked people to work for him; he convinced them there was no way his scheme could succeed without them. If they didn’t come on board with his latest venture, it was utterly and completely doomed. Everyone Newman recruited—whether teenaged volunteers or titans of industry— received a variation of the same pitch:

“I can’t do this without you.”

NEWMAN ASSEMBLED HIS crew of whalers as if he were selecting master criminals in an Oceans 11–style caper movie. He needed a harpooner, an artist, a scientist, and someone to share their story with the world.

Killing a whale is easy—just aim the gun and shoot. Using a harpoon would allow the whale to be killed without doing serious damage to the body or the organs, but it would be challenging. Fortunately, the Department of Fisheries knew the perfect man for the job—veteran fisherman Ronald Sparrow. A respected member of the Musqueam nation, Sparrow knew how to harpoon a whale, and most importantly, he had his own harpoon.

Sparrow had installed an ancient Norwegian gun on his own gill-netter to shoot the killer whales that were chasing his catch. The weapon was a natural whale repellent; the moment it was mounted on Sparrow’s boat, the whales vanished. That was good news for Sparrow, but perhaps someone should have taken it as a sign that it might not be the ideal weapon for landing a whale.

Newman found his sculptor by asking the head of Vancouver’s Emily Carr Art School to recommend someone who could make an accurate and beautiful model of a killer whale. The answer was thirty-eight-year-old Samuel Burich. Burich had specialized in stone carving at Saint Martin’s School of Art in London and was now teaching sculpting at the Vancouver school of art. Not only was he a respected sculptor, he was also a fisherman and marine engineer. This combination of skills made him the perfect man for the mission, especially since the plan called for him to study the shape of the dead whale and take precise measurements while it was still in the sheltered bay off East Point.

Burich was so intrigued by the offer that he quickly crafted a small sculpture of a killer whale, which he presented to Newman as proof that he was the only man for the job. The most enthusiastic member of the crew, Burich also offered to serve as Sparrow’s “co-gunner.” He was hired for $300 a month (only $100 less than Newman’s original salary for running the aquarium), plus a $500 completion bonus, to craft a whale out of fiberglass and plaster.

Newman’s most impressive catch, however, was Dr. Patrick Lucey McGeer. Since Newman was the aquarium’s chief fundraiser, his curatorial skills were less important than his political skills, so his choice for a lead scientist was ideal on every front. A world-renowned neuroscientist, the thirty-seven-year-old McGeer had recently been elected a member of the B.C. legislature, representing one of the province’s wealthiest communities—an electoral district adjacent to the one where the aquarium was located.

McGeer had grown up in the spotlight. His father was a provincial court judge, his mother was one of the city’s only female media stars, and his uncle Gerald Grattan McGeer was arguably B.C.’s most popular politician—a two-term mayor of Vancouver who was also elected to the provincial and federal legislatures.

A scientist and an athlete, McGeer also found himself in the spotlight as a basketball star, leading his university team in scoring to beat the visiting Harlem Globetrotters and representing Canada in the Olympics.

McGeer met his wife, Edith, when they were both doing research at Princeton. After moving to Vancouver to work together at UBC, they began turning their lab into one of the world’s most respected neurological research facilities, where they were assembling a huge collections of human brains.

Newman and McGeer first met at a school fundraising dinner. Newman joked that “he [McGeer]was famous and I could read. I said he should really be working on whales. I was beginning to think about this idea of somehow capturing a killer whale and I discussed this with him a little bit and he was hooked.”

According to McGeer, Newman was an expert with the hook. “Murray has this marvelous technique of engaging people with something terribly important and then pretending that he’s helpless and he can’t do it unless you participate. Nobody else I’ve ever met has this particular skill, but that’s how he built the aquarium from nothing. Murray could have gone a long way in politics.”

McGeer didn’t know much about whales—he’d never even seen one—but he loved the idea of getting his hands—and scalpel—on what promised to be one of the biggest brains in the world. “It was known that dolphins had very large brains and these were sort of like super dolphins,” says McGeer. Since this was the height of the Cold War, dolphins weren’t just studied; they were being trained by Americans and Russians as potential underwater spies. “I thought if we’re going to kill a killer whale, then I’d better get a look at the brain and compare it with the brains of other species.”

McGeer was too busy to spend time on Saturna—he had smaller brains to deal with as a politician—but he was touted in all the media coverage. His involvement gave the endeavor an air of gravitas, and other specialists lined up for their piece of orca pie. This was the era of slice-and-dice science—the way to study an animal was to catch, kill, and dissect it. Dr. Gordon Pike, a marine biologist, called dibs on most of the internal organs. Researchers at Vancouver General Hospital wanted the heart and lungs.

Because the hunt was expected to be historic—or at the very least, a great way to capture headlines—members of the media accompanied the team.

Jack Long, a documentary maker for the National Film Board of Canada, was initially on hand to record the historic mission. After Long left the island, Vancouver Sun newspaper columnist Jack Scott arrived to chronicle what he described as “the most obsessive whale hunt since Moby Dick.” Scott filed a series of special reports on the adventure he dubbed “Murray’s Operation Killer Whale.”

Vince Penfold, the aquarium’s assistant curator, was brought to Saturna as a lookout.

The final members of the crew were the five men serving on the sixty-five-foot coast guard vessel the Chilco Post. It was their job to finish off the specimen once Sparrow shot it. Scott explained:

The plan is this: On the far side of the cliff, beyond Chilco Post’s view, one of the lookouts will race to the high ground of the lighthouse when the action begins. He will wave a yellow rainslicker. This will be the signal for Chilco Post to get into the act. It will run at full speed out through angry waters to the Boiling Reef, around the headland and engage the harpooned whale in combat, following its flight by means of the enormous marker buoys attached to the end of the harpoon’s line. When the stricken whale surfaces for air, as, of course it must, the crew of Chilco Post, braced at the gunwales will pump a hail of rifle bullets into it.

Then Scott warned of the possible consequences. “No one can say for sure how a killer whale will react if the harpoon does not strike a vital spot and, moreover, there’s every likelihood that the other bulls in the pack, or ‘pod,’ as it’s properly known will attack the ship itself, as they have been known to do in the past . . . Since a bull killer whale runs to 25 feet in length, and has a mouthful of teeth and a disposition that can only be described as perfectly dreadful, the possibilities are downright chilling.”

Scott was trying to sell newspapers by amping up the drama, but he’d captured the zeitgeist. The Vancouver Aquarium was hunting a monster, and these hunters were risking their lives.