My earliest memory of orcas is a children's picture book published by the National Geographic Society about Namu, a northern resident male who was accidentally caught in a fisher's net off of Namu, British Columbia, and became one of the first orcas in captivity. I remember that this book, a gift from my grandmother, came with several other books: one about bees, one about pandas, one about recovering sunken treasure. But it was the book about Namu that I wanted read to me over and over again, and it was the pictures of Namu swimming with his captor that enchanted me. I wanted to see Namu for myself, and was devastated to learn that he had died before I was even born.
I became obsessed with whales and dolphins. In first grade, during the ceramics portion of our art class, I made a pinch-pot with the clumsy image of an orca etched into the bowl. In second grade, we went to Alaska, taking a ferry boat up the Inside Passage. I was so excited, sure that I would finally be seeing live orcas in person! I spent nearly every minute of the 3-day trip glued to a window in search of fins or blows, and didn't see a single whale. I was, however, lucky enough to visit an elementary school in Juneau on the day they happened to have a Tlinget elder come to teach a dance to the students. I recall that he gave me a dance blanket with two orcas on it to wear while I learned the dance, and I was thrilled.
Later that year, as my parents were packing our camper for a family vacation one morning, my mom came rushing into the house, calling my name. "The blackfish are out!" I remember her yelling, and I was out the door in a heartbeat, barefoot in my nightgown. There, right in front of our house, a superpod of orcas--almost certainly the SRKW--were swimming past. As I think of it now, it makes no sense that they would be there, then--it was late July or early August, a time when they are usually found about 100 miles north of here, and they were all very close to the eastern shore. I have never seen them come so close since, but I vividly remember watching them go by that morning.
I discovered a book about killer whales in the school library, and for the rest of my time at that elementary school mine was the only name on the check-out card. I had practically memorized the book before I left fifth grade. In third grade I begged my old first grade teacher to let me come back to class and teach her students about whales. That was my first stint as an environmental educator. I decided, once I knew there was a name for it, that I would grow up to be a cetologist. My tenth birthday gift was a trip to the Vancouver, BC aquarium to see Skana (who, although I didn't know it at the time, was a member of the SRKW population) and Hyak. Although Skana died in the year after I first saw her, a poster of her performing at the aquarium hung on my bedroom wall for years.
While I was in middle school, my family took a trip to southern California to visit the essential theme parks of a middle-class American childhood, including Sea World in San Diego. It was here I finally, after so many years of wishing, had the chance to interact with live dolphins at their petting tank. It's enormously hypocritical of me, and I realize that, but I am glad that I had that experience before I came to understand how awful it is to keep cetaceans in captivity. While in SoCal, we also visited Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which is where we figured I would end up going to college if I pursued my goal of becoming a cetologist. The hot, humid climate didn't agree with me, though. And I didn't want to study just any whales, I wanted to be with the SRKW. Those were the whales I had fallen in love with, but I didn't know what I could do with my life that would bring me closer to them.
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