Aboriginal Band Demands Stop To Plan To Relocate Luna From Their Waters

Wednesday, June 23, 2004
GOLD RIVER, BC - An aboriginal band fighting a plan to reunite a playful but dangerous orca with its pod has written a letter to federal officials demanding the effort be put off.

"We request your immediate assistance for the following actions before the situation with DFO gets out of hand," Chief Mike Maquinna wrote in a letter to Kevin Stringer, the regional director general of the Department of Fisheries.

In the letter, Maquinna demands that Fisheries scientists "cease attempts to capture the killer whale and withdraw from our waters" until a marine mammal agreement is reached between his band, the area tribal council and the department.

The letter is the latest salvo in a gradually deteriorating relationship between aboriginals who believe Luna embodies the spirit of their late chief and Fisheries scientists who are attempting to capture Luna in an effort to reunite him with his pod.

On Tuesday, Luna was playing near the net pen where scientists plan to hold him for a week so he can undergo medical tests, but Fisheries deliberately chose not to capture the whale, preferring instead to ease Luna into the idea.

On Wednesday, however, Luna had again travelled to his favourite spot at Mooya Bay, about 30 kilometres away from the net pen in the Gold River harbour.

But as Fisheries scientists tried again Wednesday morning to get Luna to follow their boat, another craft, an aluminum vessel, got within the 500 metre no-go zone Fisheries has been attempting to preserve around Luna.

There could be charges against the skipper of the vessel, which was travelling along with the canoes filled with members of Maquinna's band.

The band members have been trying to lure Luna away from the net pen for the past week.

Ron Kehl, the chief fisheries protection officer for the operation, said "evidence has been collected" about the incident, but he said no one has been in touch with Crown lawyers or with the Justice Department.

The department would prefer not to lay charges if they can avoid it, he said.

It is a federal offence to interfere with a whale.

As the wind whipped the seas into an uncomfortable chop later in the afternoon and as the hostility between the aboriginals and the scientists grew, Fisheries called off its pursuit of Luna.

In his letter, Maquinna said the Mowachaht-Muchalaht people want an agreement to allow them to "steward" Luna. The band also wants to be involved in "a culturally appropriate relocation of the whale when it is the culturally appropriate time."

The band also wants the money they'll need to properly support Luna and to conduct a public education campaign for visitors "using our title waters."

Marilyn Joyce, marine mammal co-ordinator for Fisheries, said officials have had a number of discussions with the band about stewardship and whether that would be effective in managing the public safety risk that Luna now poses.

"We don't feel at this point, after two summers and numerous attempts to manage the risk to the public here, that that is really going to be effective," she said.

"That has been considered. If it's on the table again, I think our conclusion is that we have an animal here that is habituated to the boats."

The First Nation has also demanded Joyce's resignation. Maquinna said his group has "lost confidence in her ability to communicate and consult."

Luna appeared in Nootka Sound three years ago, about the same time as Maquinna's late father expressed a deathbed wish for his spirit to inhabit an orca.

Healthy but alone, Luna has increasingly sought company from humans and some humans have been happy to oblige. Luna will often nudge up against boats and scratch himself on boat propellers.

After consultation with a scientific panel of experts from the United States and Canada, the decision was made to attempt to reunite Luna with his pod, which spends the summer in Pedder Bay, about 350 kilometres down the coast in waters near Victoria.

The plan is to capture Luna in the net pen in Gold River and conduct a series of medical tests. If Luna passes, he will be crane-lifted into a water-filled container, placed on the back of a transport truck, then trucked down the coast. He will be released into a net pen at Pedder Bay and will be released to follow his family once the pod is in acoustic range.

"The only real chance that he has of leading a normal life as a wild whale is to get him near his pod and hope that he'll be more interested in the other whales," Joyce said.

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