A new course for orcas

TELEGRAPH COVE, B.C. — Not so long ago, the boat and captured orca would have been heading south to an aquarium, to civilization.

In 1965, famed orca handler Ted Griffin towed Namu in a floating pen from the wilds of British Columbia to Seattle's busy waterfront.

Our fascination for these whales was born that year as Griffin donned wetsuit and began swimming with his captured 21-foot orca. But Namu soon died in captivity, and Griffin was back hunting orcas as aquariums jockeyed for their own crowd-pleasing killer whale.

Yesterday, on live TV, two governments came together aboard a donated high-speed ferry to haul an orphaned orca from a Puget Sound pen to the waters of her old home off Vancouver Island. Our view on orcas, an icon of the Northwest, it seems, has shifted 180 degrees.

"It's fabulous that we're now looking at this whale from a totally different point of view," said Griffin, now retired and breeding tropical fish at his home in Bellevue. His old partner's son-in-law is lead wrangler of the reintroduction of the orphaned whale that some have taken to calling Springer.

While we have come a long way from viewing killer whales as people eaters or aquarium performers, it's another thing to actually put an orca back into its natural environment after it began to bond with boaters and an old state ferry.

The 2-year-old whale, named A-73 for her birth order in Canada's A-pod, made it safely to her new temporary home off Vancouver Island yesterday, but the big question remains: Will she be welcomed back into her family after so long an absence?

Few studies have been undertaken on the reintroduction of marine mammals. Experts, including those who have worked with the now semi-wild Keiko, agree that a successful reintroduction of A-73, or Springer, would be a first.

In coming days, the movements of A-73 and her closest family members will be closely monitored by those who hope to someday see other orcas go back to the wild.

The leaders of the effort say they may know in a matter of days if this will work. Her pod was sighted in Johnstone Strait, and she will be released quickly if it appears she is hearing the vocalizations of passing orca and becomes anxious to return to the wild. But organizers are guarded in their predictions.

"We're judging success by whether she can live on her own in the wild," said John Nightingale, president of the Vancouver Aquarium and a coordinator of the effort. "Our first hope, of course, is that she hooks right back up with her family. The problem is when you're doing something that's never been done, you can't predict the outcome."

Yesterday's smooth trip from a pen off Manchester, Kitsap County, to here was another big step in A-73's reintroduction. The 12-foot killer whale was lifted aboard the luxury Catalina Jet — on loan from Nichols Bros. Boatbuilders of Freeland, Island County — early yesterday morning with remarkably little fuss. She settled into a container on the catamaran's stern as the crew went to work keeping her moist and cool.

As the boat churned through the seas on the 340-mile trip, she chirped occasionally but remained calm, breathing easy, to the relief of those caring for her.

The catamaran arrived last night in Dong Chong Bay off the northeast tip of Hanson Island, where a crane lifted the whale onto a barge and then into a net pen at 7:17 p.m.

Once in the water, she treated cheering observers on about 30 boats to several tail splashes and a "spy hop."

The successful journey was the second of three steps in returning A-73 to the wild. Her capture in Puget Sound last month was the first.

"Here's to Step Two — one more to go," Nightingale said as he raised a glass of champagne shortly after the whale was placed in the pen.

Dolphins returned to the wild

Some of the best studies scientists have on reintroduced marine mammals involve the orca's fellow delphinid, the bottlenose dolphin. Researchers warn against extrapolating too much from their experience but the work is promising.

Randy Wells, director of the Center for Marine Mammal and Sea Turtle Resources at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla., released two dolphins in Tampa Bay in 1990 after they had been captured and used for two years for echolocation research.

"Twelve years later, they're still doing fine," he said last week.

Critical to his experiment's success was reintroducing the dolphins to their native waters and their own communities, he said. Canadian officials are working hard to control both factors, which should serve A-73 well, he said.

"The animal has as good a chance as you can get it," Wells said.

Nick Gales, an Australian marine-mammal researcher, had more ambiguous results after releasing nine dolphins from a marine park in 1992. Three were brought back in — "they were definitely not coping with the transition" — while two have gone on to become the alpha males in their communities. The whereabouts of the others are unknown.

His dolphins had been captive for as long as 12 years, and the longer an animal is away from its natural environment, the more complex and difficult its reintroduction becomes, he said.

A-73 first appeared in January between West Seattle and Vashon Island, where it fed on wild salmon, and then spent the past month in the Manchester net pen.

The brevity of time in a pen is a good thing, said Gales, principal research scientist for the Applied Marine Mammal Ecology Group of the Australian Antarctic Division.

"The scenario you are painting is the best possible for the chances of survival of the animal," he said.

Keiko, star of the movie "Free Willy," was not as fortunate. After years of captivity, efforts to reintroduce him to the wilds off Iceland are still continuing. Using a chase boat, Keiko's handlers have taken him on "sea walks" toward other killer whales, but the efforts have yet to yield results. His handlers are doing genetic research to more narrowly identify a group of orcas with whom he might be related.

A-73's handlers, including Jeff Foster, a key player in the Keiko effort, said there are significant differences between the two orcas.

"She is a perfect candidate for this," said Foster, son-in-law of former Griffin partner Don Goldsberry. "We had a lot of things working against us with Keiko."

Among them: Keiko's history of captivity, a strong bond with humans and no known relatives or community in which to attempt a reintroduction.

"A lot of situations are different here," said Lance Barrett-Lennard, a leader of the science team assembled by Fisheries and Oceans Canada to help with A-73.

Researchers know A-73's pod and its history. They know her mother is probably dead but that her grandmother and aunts are alive. And they have minimized her interaction with humans.

"We're considerably more optimistic that this effort will be a success than was the case with Keiko," he said.

In some ways, A-73 is less like a captive orca and more like the whales that orca captors used to hold for a few days, then release. Griffin recalled holding 17 orcas for 17 days while figuring out what to do when he first began netting the creatures in the 1960s. He took five, one died and he released 11, recognizing a few swimming in the wild afterward.

In 1976, two transient whales were held for more than two months while their captors fought a court challenge. They were then released and went on to thrive in the wild, he said.

In yet another sense, A-73 could be viewed as an animal that became stranded, was briefly rehabilitated and then set free again. Researchers such as Wells at the Mote lab have had good success with other delphinids and could learn more from A-73 about what methods work best, he said.

A-73's prospects could come down to how she was lost to begin with, said John Ford, a Fisheries and Oceans scientist who will decide when the killer whale is to be released. She may have been rejected by her pod, he said, making a reintroduction difficult.

But in another scenario, her mother became ill and fell behind the pod in its travels around Vancouver Island. A-73 stayed with her, losing touch with the pod as well. Then, when her mother died, A-73 worked her way down to Seattle, far from where the northern residents typically go.

"What we're hoping is, given the opportunity to get back to the pod, that will happen," Ford said.

The Canadians are also relying on the intense loyalty orcas have for their families, a key difference between them and other delphinids. With this in mind, they will watch for the return of a matrilineal pod headed by A-24, Springer's grandmother, or the group headed by A-24's sister, A-11.

The actual timing of the release could be affected by daylight and weather and the movement of nearby pods. OrcaLab, a local research station, has six underwater microphones in and around Johnstone Strait with which to hear the A-24s as they come in. All other things being favorable, the Canadians will drop the side of A-73's pen here when her relatives are within hearing distance, about five miles.

Then her fate will be in her own fins.

"Once we release her," said Ford, "that's all we can do. There's not much we can do beyond that."

Eric Sorensen: 206-464-8253 and esorensen@seattletimes.com.