Officials Consider Relocating Luna Before Something Bad Happens

Saturday, July 19, 2003
GOLD RIVER, BC -- "He's a nice pet," says Lorraine Howatt, who, with her husband Grant, owns Air Nootka, a float plane company, in Gold River. "Totally a pet. People have made him a pet."

The problem, as the Howatts readily admit, is that Luna, a three-year-old, four-metre-long, one-tonne killer whale, is also a wild animal. And a potentially dangerous wild animal at that.

But try telling that to the woman who dangled her four-year-old daughter over Luna's head so the little girl could pat him.

Or the people who play fetch with him using boat fenders. Or the boaters who engage in tug o' war contests using their oars.

Try telling that to anyone who has fed him beer and chips.

"You can't," adds Howatt. "I tell people, 'What's the difference between petting a bear and petting Luna?' But they don't listen.

"He's a wild animal two inches away from their feet, and that's pretty darn unique. It's what makes him so appealing. But it's not doing him any good."

This week, the federal department of fisheries of oceans (DFO), the agency ultimately responsible for deciding what to do with Luna, began investigating allegations that one of its contract employees, a patrolman hired to monitor sport fishermen in the area, struck Luna with a stick.

The story goes that the man was trying to get his boat and a dinghy into port. But Luna, who is fond of rubbing up against boats and interacting with the people inside them, kept interfering with him, and, in frustration, the man struck out at him.

If convicted, he could face a $100,000 fine or six months in jail.

Grant Howatt said he spoke to the man who admitted hitting Luna with a board.

"Then he said: 'You know what they do with problem bears? They shoot them.' "

That's what Paul Spong, a lifelong whale scientist who monitors orcas at the north end of Vancouver Island, is worried will happen to Luna.

"I'm afraid someone is going to get so outraged with him that they're going to pick up a gun and blast away," Spong said. "It's a very common solution."

It's also why Spong's is one of a growing number of voices demanding that Luna, who has been living on his own in Nootka Sound on the western side of Vancouver Island for more than two years, be rescued and relocated to his home pod on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, in the same way that Springer, an orphaned female orca, was reunited with her home pod last year.

Scientists, including Spong, were delighted 10 days ago when Springer returned to Johnstone Strait with the same pod of whales she was travelling with when she was last seen in October 2002.

It was a far cry from a year-and-a-half ago, when she was languishing sick and alone in Puget Sound outside Seattle. Concern about her was so great that last summer, she was moved by boat and a throng of volunteers to Telegraph Cove on the eastern shore of Vancouver Island and let go in the company of whales like her.

Because no one had ever attempted such a reunification before, no one knew if it would work. But it did, says Spong, and in doing so it set a precedent. A precedent, he believes, that could save Luna.

Orcas customarily spend their whole lives with their mothers, except when they break away to mate, says Spong. Luna's mother is a member of the southern resident population of orcas that frequents southern Georgia Strait, Juan de Fuca Strait and Puget Sound in the summer.

So his thinking is that if Luna can be reunited with his home pod, his mother and other relatives might look after him, and his days of living as a wild "pet" in Nootka Sound would be over.

Marc Pakenham, executive director of the Veins of Life Watershed Society, an environmental group in Victoria, agrees. On Friday he met with a group of scientists, fellow non-government organizations, whale-watching businesses and officials from the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service, to discuss Luna's fate. Pakenham hopes to be able to mount a rescue operation for him this September.

He believes time is running out for Luna, and that unless something is done soon for him, he could be killed, badly injured or simply left to deteriorate.

Luna is already showing signs of it, Pakenham says. "This is not a scientific way to put it, but I have a sense that he is dispirited. His behaviour is not as lively as it was last year."

After Friday's meeting, Pakenham said he was heartened by the international cooperation. The orphaned orca fund, established to reunite Springer with her pod, will be put into play with Luna (who is normally a member of "L Pod"), as will the many crucial partnerships that made Springer's journey to her family pod possible.

"This fund made it possible to get governments onside and make [Springer's reunion] happen," Pakenham said. The group is now seeking cooperation from DFO and the National Marine Fisheries Service in the U.S.

Pakenham said the group now has a 50-day window to get organized for the Luna move, which he says must take place in September. Luna's L Pod swims in local waters until late winter, early spring, before it moves offshore.

"He needs at least a couple of months to let him get re-socialized [with the pod before it leaves]," Pakenham said.

Pakenham already has a number of donors prepared to contribute boats, trucks, time and whatever else is necessary, and he reckons the whole operation could be done for about $200,000.

Marilyn Joyce, the DFO's marine-mammal coordinator, agrees Luna's situation is getting worse. In May, the DFO decided against taking any immediate action on Luna's behalf, saying that because he appeared to be fit and healthy, there was no need.

But in saying that, the agency hoped visitors to Gold River would behave themselves and not bother Luna. The problem is they haven't.

"What we see now is that there's a significant change in the number of people and boaters in the area, and Luna's now much more interested in making contact with them," Joyce says.

Consequently, the DFO is re-examining its position, and wondering if leaving Luna alone is the best thing to do.

"What we're doing is looking at this new information, re-evaluating the risks, and trying to figure out what's best for this whale," says Joyce.

John Ford, a marine mammal scientist at the Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo, is also wondering what to do for Luna. Initially, he also believed that leaving him alone was the right course. In fact, he hoped at one time that Luna might simply swim out of the sound and rejoin his pod on his own.

But that didn't happen, and now Ford is scratching his head, too. He admits the success of the Springer relocation has given scientists like him a confidence in the process they didn't have before, but even so, there's no guarantee, he adds, that reintroducing Luna to his home pod would work.

"And if it doesn't work, it would mean we'd be taking him out of a place where he's physically fine and placing him in greater jeopardy."

That's because Juan de Fuca strait has appreciably more boat traffic than Nootka Sound, Ford says, so if Luna isn't accepted by his pod following a relocation, the danger of him being injured by a boat would be that much greater.

"Then the only solution would be long-term captivity, and I think most people wouldn't want to see that fate for him."

No one, including Ford, knows how Luna got to Nootka Sound in the first place. The best theory, Pakenham says, is that for reasons no one understands, he was separated from his mother and started travelling with his uncle, a whale named Orcan.

Then during the winter of 2000/2001, it's possible Orcan became ill and died, leaving Luna to fend for himself.

Right now, the only action DFO is prepared to take on Luna's behalf is to step up monitoring of him and the hundreds of tourists, fishermen and residents who turn up every day in Gold River harbour to gawk at him. Despite earlier funding concerns, it now has engaged Pakenham, a former DFO official, and his Veins of Life to do that, and Pakenham says he will oblige.

But that doesn't mean he's happy about it.

"This whole situation is really untenable," he says. "For us to be put in a position of managing this kind of crowd with no real authority, except moral authority, is asking a lot."