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magazine / ja01
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July/August 2001 issue |
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FEATURE
Eavesdropping on orcas
By Bruce Obee
From the cockpit of the research cruiser Squamish, biologist
John Ford squints into the morning sun toward the Broughton Archipelago,
a scattering of islands and reefs between Vancouver Island and the British
Columbia mainland. The storms of mid-October are only days away, and
this is the calm before. Threads of mist lingering on the mountaintops
are mirrored in a sea as smooth as pond ice. Fishermen and whale-watching
guides chatting on the marine radio say the orcas moved out of Johnstone
Strait last night and swam up the northeast coast of Vancouver Island,
then across to Knight Inlet. By now, they could have followed the salmon
well into the waterways of the Coast Mountains. Or they could be hunting
nearby, in the warren of narrow channels that flows between Johnstone
and Queen Charlotte straits.
Ford lowers a hydrophone over the gunwale and listens
through headphones for the underwater calls of the killer whales. Behind
the pulsating chug of a passing fishboat, he detects the far-off whistles
and sharp staccato clicks of foraging orcas: A1 pod, the first whales
Ford recorded when he began his studies here 24 years ago. He retrieves
the hydrophone, mounts a parabolic dish behind it to determine the direction
of the sound and puts it back into the water. Slowly, he rotates the
dish until the eerie cries get louder. "Northwest," he calls
up to the command bridge. "About five miles."
Graeme Ellis, Ford's long-time research partner, glasses the horizon
at the entrance to Queen Charlotte Strait. Through the binoculars, he
spots an eagle harassing a flock of feeding gulls but no whale blows.
He swings the Squamish northwest, and as it skims toward the birds,
there is a burst of vapour off the starboard bow. Then another and another.
As Ellis slows down the boat to watch, the glossy black fins of four
orcas simultaneously explode into view, revealing in their midst a tiny
black-and-white newborn calf.
Ford takes the helm so Ellis can photograph the whales and shoot close-ups
of nicks and scars on their fins and adjacent saddle patches. He focuses
on the fetal folds in the calf's skin and guesses its age at two
or three days, too young to bear any permanent markings. "I've
been working with these animals a long time," says Ellis, "and I still get excited
about a new calf. I guess I think everyone should be excited by it."
Ellis
is leader of the Canadian government's Pacific cetacean program
in Nanaimo; Ford, head of marine-mammal research at Vancouver Aquarium's
Marine Science Centre. For nearly 30 years, the pair has led much of
Canada's fieldwork on Orcinus orca, contributing to a rapidly growing
body of evidence that whales and dolphins have cultural traditions and
pass on learned behaviours from one generation to the next.
Bruce Obee is a writer based in Sidney, B.C. Above images by Roy
Tanami/Ursus Photography.
For the rest of this story, visit your local newsstand or go to our store to buy this issue.
Related stories:
• In Depth: Eavesdropping
on Orcas
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