|
Guest Article: Kayaking with Killer Whales
by Andrew Bill -
Special to The Spokesman Review May 2007
“It’s
interesting to note that killers have a short, thick snout, similar to that of
the Tyrannosaurus Rex,” explained Terry Prichard, with all the matter of
factness one might expect from an ex-geologist. “Then there are the teeth.
Fifty-two of them. Exactly the same number as the Dakosaurus Andiniensis, a
giant sea crocodile with the head of a dinosaur, so savage, so ferocious, it
dominated the seas 135 million years ago.”
These similarities might
be “interesting” to someone sitting at home or in a doctor’s
office reading a magazine, but they make a far deeper impression when
you’re bobbing up and down on the gentle swells off the northeast edge of
Vancouver Island, just a few kayak lengths from three enormous killer whales.
Roiling the waters in search of food, they were swimming backward and forward
in a slow rhythm, periodically stabbing six-foot-high dorsals through the
surface, exploding vaporous breaths that hung in the suddenly silent air, then
disappearing with the grace of precision swimmers into the opalescent depths
for where-have-they-gone, heart-pumping minutes. Just when I was beginning to
feel like the last succulent shrimp on the buffet table, Terry was greeting
them by name, as casually as if they were family pets. “Judging by the
shape of their dorsels,” he said, “those boys are Cracroft, Plumper
and Kaikash."
Some people might
consider sea kayaking in search of killers an eccentric choice for a summer
vacation, a foolhardy pursuit akin to rough housing with Grizzlies or
snorkeling with Great Whites. Yet it has undeniable attractions, starting with
rare bragging rights. At a dinner party, when it comes round to the inevitable
“What’s new?” question, there aren’t too many people who
can trump an answer like, “Oh yes, I’m off kayaking with killer
whales.” Besides, I reasoned, there wouldn’t be commercial kayaking
trips offering killers as a main attraction if there was any danger. Right? And
if there were, if killer whales actually did what their name suggests, surely
Google would know about it. Right?
 |
So, last summer,
reassured by the Internet oracle, I booked with Sea Kayak Adventures (SKA) and
traveled across the continent on two planes and two taxis from my home in urban
New York to Port McNeill, at the northern tip of Vancouver Island. Starting
from this quiet logging port right on the edge of nowhere in particular, SKA
runs six-day trips paddling by day through the channels of Johnstone Strait and
camping on its beaches at night. The price was right ($990 US - inclusive of
food, dry bags, camping and kayak equipment) and killers were all but
guaranteed.
Orcas, as they are more
decorously named, live in all the world’s oceans from the tropics to the
polar ice pack, but Johnstone Strait - a 2-mile wide, 50-mile long slit
separating northern Vancouver Island from British Columbia - is one of the best
places to see these endangered creatures in the wild. It’s as remote a
spot as you’re likely to find below the Arctic Circle, inhabited until
recently only by a handful of xenophobic fishermen and subsistence loggers. The
Mainland, as the surrounding scatter of inlets, tide-torn passages and
pine-pricked islands are known locally, still only holds a handful of very
seasonal and none-too-sophisticated lodges. The currents demand respect, the
weather is wild for eight months of the year, and the water is cold enough
(averaging 48 degrees) in those other months that swimming for pleasure is
something you try only once.
But it has fish.
Johnstone and its feeder channels are a giant fish run, teeming with Pacific
salmon from mid-June to late fall when they zero in like nature’s smart
missiles on the narrow, forest-choked streams in which they were spawned. And
this giant fish course attracts a similarly rich crowd of diners. Snow-headed
bald eagles bend the uppermost branches of waterside firs; harbour seals lie
like satiated slugs on the rocks; Steller sea lions, Dall’s porpoises and
lone humpbacks linger in the bays; and around 220 “Northern Resident”
killers return like clockwork, year after year, making these waters their
summer home.
And, God knows, Johnstone has beauty. I say
“God” with reverence, because there is something of the divine in
this breach of sea and sky. Oh sure, it’s partly because of the wildlife
and because there is an old pantheist in me eager to have his say. But
it’s also because of that great and awful silence that every writer from
Jack London to Robert Service has tried to capture with a net of words.
It’s a beauty bestowed by harsh nature, by the syrupy swells and climbing
tides that play with the kelp beds and rake the shingle beaches. It’s the
rigid walls of pines, and the slanting light that filters down to a forest
floor, springy with loam.
HEADING STRAIT TOWARD ADVENTURE
The gateway to this land of wilderness and water is
Telegraph Cove, built in 1911 as a remote telegraph station and now, to its
surprise, in the summer spotlight, the “put-in” site for fishing
boats and kayaks bound for the Strait. And it was here, on a boat ramp slippery
with seaweed, that my party assembled on the morning of the first day, dressed
in bright Gore-Tex and splash covers (an oval of waterproof fabric, worn around
the waist like an immodest and unfashionable skirt, that seals off the hatch of
the kayak against rain and spray).
There were 13 guests and three guides in all - a
typically broad mix of age groups, professions and characters that, after a few
days in the crucible of nature, ends up being one of the great rewards of an
adventure trip. Divided into pairs, we stuffed our 21-foot Seaward fiberglass
doubles (only two of the guides had singles) as tight as drums with essentials,
including personal belongings, tents, food, water, wine and even an ingenious
sealed toilet. Under the keen eye of a bald eagle in a nearby tree, we then
carried the laden kayaks down to the water and paddled in a tight but graceless
flotilla out of the Cove.
There is something about sea kayaking that is
satisfying, not just physically, but on a deep-down visceral level. Sitting
right at water level, there is an immediacy to the whole experience that just
can’t be replicated in a bigger boat, as though you are meeting nature
close to its own terms. There is the purity of propelling yourself forward
under your own steam. And the Zen-like repetition of strokes combines with the
stillness (no motor noise or vibration) to induce an uncommon level of
introspection. In a sea-kayak you are part of the scene, not merely viewing
it.
Hugging the rocky shore for a couple of hours, we
stopped for lunch at a broad beach of pebbles turning into rocks then tangles
of tree trunks before ending at an almost impenetrable back wall of trees. The
kayaks were hauled up to await the climbing tide. Then we set off again, more
at ease now with the motion and, for those paddlers in the rear cockpit, the
foot pedals that controlled the rudder. In the long shadows of late afternoon
we arrived at our campsite on Little Kaikash Beach and made camp. Dinner was
served in the thickening light and we sat on the immense trunks of sea-bleached
trees looking out across the empty water. So far, no killers.
KILLER WHALE 101
The next morning, we broke camp, re-stuffed the kayaks
and paddled away from the mountain-backed, pine-walled shore of Vancouver
Island, crossing the Strait to Hanson Island. And it was here, in the shadow of
the island’s rocky cliff, that we met up with Cracroft, Plumper and
Kaikash, and Terry shared his knowledge of dinosaur dental work.
Despite his measured tone, Google’s reassurance
and the killers’ pet names, all I could think of were those TBS specials.
The ones with killers launching themselves up a beach to snap a sea lion like a
sweet pickle, or exploding an ice floe from underneath and gulping down its
cargo of seals in a blood-stained sea. “Today it’s killers who rule
the oceans,” Terry continued, unreassuringly. One of our guides, he’s
also a co-owner of SKA, and our expert on all things from sea mammals to
volcanic lava tubes and native lore. “They are the largest member of the
dolphin family, growing up to 30 feet and 12,000 pounds, making them easily the
world’s largest predator. And their appetites are proportionate. Big guys
like these three eat around 550 pounds of food a day.” That’s
equivalent to three of my fellow kayakers, stripped of their fiberglass
shells.
The killers surfaced in unison, and turned, this time
swimming directly toward our cluster of kayaks. That’s OK apparently. The
local rule of thumb is that nobody can go within 100 yards of a whale, but, if
he decides to come to you or swim under your boat, well, that’s considered
a bonus. I looked around for signs of flight, but the other two guides, Paul
and Sarah, just sat there casually, lowering hydrophones into the water so we
could listen to the whales’ highly evolved language of staccato snaps,
clicks and pops of echo location. When the pod dived again, Terry returned to
Killer Whale 101.
“Equal opportunity eaters, they’re fond of
all kinds of seafood from small seabirds on up. Hunting like wolves in
synchronized packs up to 40 creatures strong, they’ll even attack 60-foot
Blue Whales, the world’s largest animals, herding them into shallow water
so they can’t dive out of reach, then darting in to tear off chunks of
flesh with their neat rows of three-inch conical teeth.” Sitting in my
kayak, I was as close to the water as one can get without swimming. The black,
sun-shafted depths below my boat swirled with shadows. “Their name comes
from their appetite for other whales. ‘Orca’ sounds better. Unless of
course you’re a Latin scholar and you know ‘Orcinus Orca’ means
‘barrel from the land of the dead’.” Thirty feet to my right,
the three males broke the glassy surface once more. Unaware of the stir they
caused, they headed out into the Strait.
WATER, EARTH & SKY
We had lingered with the whales for half an hour or
more and, even here in the great unhurried “now” of nature, we were
late. There was a tide to catch. We grabbed a quick lunch on shore, then, just
as the current slackened at high tide, darted through narrow Blackney Passage,
and skimmed across Parson’s Bay to Red Point Beach, our camping site for
the next three nights.
Over the following days, we paddled round West Cracroft
and Harbledown islands and through their labyrinth of coves and inlets. The
going was easy and, even though we were in the kayaks for five or more hours a
day, nobody from the grandmother in the group to the pair of young
fresh-out-of-college teachers, showed any signs of fatigue. One day we pulled
the kayaks up on the beach of Village Island to stroll through the ruins of
Mamalilacula, once a thriving settlement of the Kwakiutl tribe and now
deserted, abandoned to the weeds and moss since 1969. After changing out of his
blue jeans into ceremonial robes, an elder walked out of the tall grass to tell
a creation story in a quavering, echoing voice. Although a paid performance for
tourists, it had a sweetness to it, a strange melancholy that came as much from
the scene as from the words, from the decaying timbers, the midden (a 10-foot
bank of discarded oyster shells) and a ceremonial (totem) pole, left to rot its
way back into nature according to custom.
One great advantage of kayaking over, say, hiking, is
that the kayaks are big enough to haul great coolers, filled with fresh
vegetables, fruit and other foods you wouldn’t expect to find on a beach
far, far from the nearest light-bulb. There was an innovative spin to the menus
that never gave out. There were fresh eggs for breakfast even on the last
morning. Paul turned out fluffy chocolate cakes from the Dutch Oven. Sarah
grilled fresh-caught salmon over the campfire using a hand-whittled griddle in
the native tribal tradition.
CATCH ME WHILE YOU CAN
One afternoon, after returning early to our campsite on
Red Point Beach, we climbed a forest path that wound through shaggy-barked
cedars to a lookout point where, judging from fresh scat, a cougar had recently
been enjoying the view. Each night, we clambered along the rocky shore to catch
the sun dipping in colorful fanfare down into the Pacific. On one occasion the
resident humpback breached repeatedly, throwing his leviathan body effortlessly
into the air, silhouetted against the gaudy sky. Nature is a lodestone that
quickly changes strangers into friends and, after dinner, as the sunset gave
way to a small circle of firelight, conversations and sophomoric games delayed
the flash-light-stumble to the tents embedded in the darkness of the forest at
the back of the beach.
Most memorable of all, we saw over 20 killers in the
course of the six-day trip. Several nights, as we sat around the campfire we
heard them blow, tantalizingly close in the darkness. And day-by-day,
encounter-by-encounter, my preconceptions faded. Despite their name and
reputation, killers pose no threat to humans. On the contrary, there have been
reports of them saving drowning men and even working in concert with Whalers,
herding blubber whales within harpoon range in return for a share of the
spoils. They are disturbingly intelligent, the Mensa member of the animal
world, with a brain four times the size of ours. They are the only animals
other than humans to have dialects in their language.
It turns out the antisocial behavior in the TBS
specials comes from “transient” pods that travel unpredictably and
great distances. Thanks to research conducted over the last 20 years right here
in Johnstone Strait notably by late Dr. Michael Bigg, the Jane Goodhall
of the killer world another group has emerged. “Resident” pods
return to sheltered waters like Johnstone year in and year out, acting like
they’re on try-outs for a remake of those sappy Free Willy movies
inflicted on us in the mid-90s. Shunning the transients, they hang around in
family groups, nurturing their young until well into maturity and eating
nothing larger than fish. Showing a cat-like indifference to humans, they like
nothing better than scratching their bellies against the stones of shallow
beaches.
Unfortunately, the killer story doesn’t end there.
In a strange irony repeated throughout the natural world, we only begin to
understand certain species as we begin to lose them. Just 50 years ago, the
United States Navy was given instructions to shoot killers with machine guns.
Today, despite mounting conservation efforts in Johnstone Strait, the links in
the food chain are losing their strength, the water is growing more and more
toxic thanks to fish farms and runoff caused by over-logging. The arguments
between environmentalists and those who depend on natural resources for their
pay packet continue, at best only slowing the inevitable. The Northern
Residents are now a firm fixture on the endangered list and, if nothing
changes, they will soon have one more thing in common with Tyrannosaurus and
Dakosaurus.
By the time we paddled back into Telegraph Cove on the
sixth day and climbed out of the kayaks for the last time, I felt changed. Not
just by the cleansing power of nature, spending six days close to the earth and
sea. Ignorance had given way to understanding, fear to concern. Instead of
shouting “glory in my unchanging beauty,” the Strait and its famous
residents seem to be whispering “catch me while you can.”
Click here for Johnstone Strait trip
description
 |
