Luna Ventures Into Open Water

Friday, September 16, 2005
GOLD RIVER, BC — Yesterday something good happened with Luna that hasn’t happened for more than a year, and holds promise. With a little help from his friends in the Mowachaht/Muchalaht stewardship program – the Kakawin Guardians -- he made it out of Nootka Sound to the edge of the open sea, and stayed there for a while.

Many of those who want Luna to reunite naturally with his pod have been hoping that he’d have the chance to learn to use at least nearby parts of the open ocean as well as the tight confines of Nootka Sound. As early as the spring of 2003 scientists advised DFO to encourage Luna’s use of the open ocean in order to facilitate a reunion. Out there he is exposed to a far wider acoustic window than he is in the Sound. If his pod approaches he’ll be able to hear them, and perhaps call to them, from much farther away.

Luna got to the edge of the ocean a few times during pre-capture training exercises in the spring of 2004, but it hasn’t happened since. It did on Wednesday.

Here’s how: Early in the morning the stewardship personnel saw Luna breaching and tail slapping in his familiar territory. This often seems to signal that one of Luna’s favourite boats is coming. Moments later the Uchuck III came around a point and steamed through Luna’s area. Luna hopped a ride on the wake and rode it a few kilometres. He left the boat near a group of kayakers, but the Kakawin Guardians, using their DFO interaction permit, intervened and led him away.

Because the Uchuck had already led Luna in the direction of the sea, the Guardians kept going. The Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation has never opposed a reunion for Luna; the members simply do not believe he should be captured and moved to try to force one to happen, and they are suspicious that a capture might lead to permanent captivity rather than to a reunion. But as we understand it, they have always been comfortable with giving Luna the choice of what he wants to do with his life. They see him as a sovereign being who can make his own decisions and may in fact be wiser than humans are about many things, but we don't think they are opposed to helping him look out of the Nootka Sound window at the options available in the big sea.

The Guardians gave him the chance to do just that. Luna followed them all the way past a group of islands that sit in the middle of the entrance to Nootka Sound, and finally out to where the Pacific swells are no longer broken by arms of land, and the horizon to the west is just a long straight line.

Luna seemed comfortable there. We were out there watching from our little boat, and when he moved away from the Guardians, he did not immediately flee back into the rocky embrace of the Sound. Instead he foraged for at least an hour among the gentle late-summer swells.

It was a big moment. To see Luna out in these vast waters made him look smaller, but also made him seem less alone, as if the barriers that lie between him and his family were reduced. The walls of stone were gone, and so, it seemed, was some of his reluctance to explore. Now the separation was just water and distance. We couldn’t help but look out at that horizon for other dorsal fins, for other puffs of orca breath. It was a magic hour, in which L-pod’s presence at the edge of Nootka Sound might emerge from the dream people have had for so long and become real.

For today, though, it remained only a hope. After a while, Luna made his choice for the day. He moved slowly away from the ocean toward more familiar places in the Sound. He didn’t go very far, though. In the evening, when we last saw his small black fin in the distance, he was only a few kilometres in from the broad opening of the Sound, still close enough to hear calls from afar.

The Kakawin Guardians have told us that they are hoping to help Luna make a habit of using the open sea for foraging -- and for listening.

Source: ReuniteLuna.com

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