Orcas and Ourselves

Be warned: there is a disturbing video clip in this piece, of three orcas kidnapping a humpback whale calf. It’s an uncomfortable watch, but isn’t this what orcas really are—whale killers? Jason Colby, the son of a commercial fisherman and a former fisherman himself, has had many close encounters with orcas and is well-placed to confront that question. Yet the piece ultimately becomes less a study of the whales than of us. Killer whales or orcas? The answer depends on the era and culture doing the looking.

Still convinced that killer whales posed a threat to humans, scientists were incredulous when Griffin ventured into the water with Namu. Rather than devouring the aquarium owner, the formidable predator let Griffin touch, brush and even ride him. Soon the two offered the world’s first orca shows on the Seattle waterfront. Millions would read about their relationship in Griffin’s article in National Geographic, ‘Making Friends With a Killer Whale’ (1966), and many more would see a fictionalised version in the film Namu: The Killer Whale (1966) (later released as Namu: My Best Friend), by the producers of Flipper (1963). Although he survived for only a year in captivity, Namu had a profound impact in two important ways: first, the public marvelled at his gentleness with Griffin; second, his popularity convinced oceanariums around the world to acquire their own orcas. In the following years, Griffin supplied most of them, including SeaWorld’s first ‘Shamu’ (short for ‘She-Namu’). Today, people around the world regard orca captivity as anathema. It is easy to forget, then, that in the 1960s and early ’70s, the debate wasn’t between whale catching and whale watching: it was between whale catching and whale killing. In the four decades following the Second World War, commercial whalers – primarily Japanese and Soviet – slaughtered some 2 million whales including hundreds, perhaps thousands, of orcas.