Lonely Luna Keeps Boaters Out All Night

Thursday, June 12, 2003
Four Vancouver Island boaters spent a night trapped on the ocean when Luna, the lonely killer whale, kept blocking their vessel, shoving it away from shore.

"The whale wouldn't leave us alone," Norman Sinclair, one of the boaters, said Wednesday. "It kept pushing the boat around."

Sinclair, who runs Analisa II Fishing Charters, had been out on the water off the Island's west coast with Cory Handeyside, Chris Lazuk and Scott Comeau for a day's cruise and were heading home when their fuel ran out about 10 minutes from shore.

To bring their 5.6-metre boat to shore, they snapped the lids off their coolers to augment their paddle.

But whenever they made headway, Luna, also known as L-98 to denote his pod and birth order, ran interference.

"The whale would keep us going the wrong way or would spin the boat around so we couldn't really paddle."

The whale had the four men going in circles from about 8:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m., when passing prawn fishermen came to their rescue.

"It would grab my rope in its mouth and tow my boat a little bit," said Sinclair, 23.

Luna also used his head to push the boat, or moved his tail through the water, sending the vessel on a 360 degree rotation.

The young whale was separated from his pod and has been living on his own in Nootka Sound, on Vancouver Island's west coast, where he turns to boats for company. He's a member of the highly social group of southern resident killer whales.

The four men didn't get any sleep on the cold water. As the hours wore on, the novelty of the situation paled.

"It wasn't funny," Sinclair said.

The situation was not dire enough to put out a mayday on the radio and Sinclair was never concerned for their safety.

Even so, "it was quite an adventure," Sinclair said.

At one point, the four were optimistic as they managed to paddle closer to shore. Then Luna surfaced, pushing the boat in the opposite direction. "Everyone was swearing at the whale," Sinclair said.

Despite what happened, Sinclair likes and respects Luna. "It's just nature."

And when passing prawn fishermen spotted Sinclair's boat and towed it to shore, Luna frolicked at the side the entire way.

Marc Pakenham, co-ordinator of the Luna stewardship program, which includes an on-the-water monitoring program, doesn't find the situation amusing. Instead, it highlights the loneliness of the whale.

"It's sad."

"This is an orca that is really lacking in the normal kind of stimulus that he would get with other whales."

Pakenham would like to see efforts made to reunite Luna with his pod. But Fisheries and Oceans Canada, which established a Canadian-U.S. panel of whale experts, has decided to leave the whale alone for now. Luna is healthy and able to find food in Nootka Sound.

Federal officials are asking boaters to do their best to avoid Luna, to encourage him to live as a wild whale.