springer the orca Documantary part 1

a city is no place for a killer whale but in January of 2002 five kilometers from Seattle Washington a young Orca is sighted in Puget Sound it seems to be about two years old only a baby the Orca or killer whales as they're commonly known virtually never travel alone this 570 kilograms baby is in a dangerous place swimming in heavy boat and ferry traffic ken balcan a well known whale biologist in the Seattle area is one of the first on the scene to investigate this is a whale that had the great potential for just bonding to a human if you were there she'd come to you you could slap the water she'd slap her flipper you could say roll over she'd roll over but no one knows where this killer whale came from or why she is alone Malcolm has been keeping track of the orcas in these waters for 27 years he knows every Orca that lives here but this one is a mystery somehow she's become separated from the rest of her family first Balcom needs to know where this lost young whale comes from she could be from one of three very different populations of killer whales one type are known as transients these are the ocean's fiercest hunters eating only marine mammals including some species of whales transient killer whales travel up and down the pacific coast of the united states and canada and there is one more possibility these killer whales are called residents they to travel up and down the coast but returned to the same feeding grounds every year through information gathered in Puget Sound the baby is identified as Springer a Canadian killer whale soon after its identity is confirmed by Canada's leading killer whale experts John Ford and Graham Ellis have been tracking an identifying orcas for over 30 years each year they head out into the Johnstone Strait to study killer whales this area right here in Johnson Strait is probably the best easily accessible known location for viewing killer whales and studying them in the world and as a result most of what we know about killer whales scientifically has been learned with this population here and and the sort of sister community the southern residents off southern Vancouver Island since 1973 these researchers have been taking mug shots of killer whales using dorsal fins to identify it dorsal fins are like fingerprints each Finn has Nicks and scrapes that are unique to each animal Ellison Ford's long-term killer whale study is probably the most detailed of its kind in the world ironically killer whales aren't whales at all they're dolphins the largest of their kind but they are deadly they'll hunt fish marine mammals and even attack a bear or moose if it decides to swim too far from shore starter CY groups are here really spread out who's that over there Graham I think that's I 24 with their new calf and i-49 I believe this is a 54 with her very first calf and her mother a 30 grandmothers here as well it's got three generations right here killer whales traveling groups as large as 20 members Ford and Ellis have discovered that each of these pods is actually an extended family really it took a number of years before it was clear that what we were dealing with here was a very unusual social system strongly matrilineal in that every whale in the pod is actually descended from females in the group so those big males are not the fathers of the offspring in the group they're actually the grown-ups sons of the mothers and the grandmothers in the group they never leave the group and this is what's so unusual about resident killer whales it's a closed social system the only way into one of these pods is to be born into it and the only way out really is to die I'm 33 Florida Nellis know their killer as well and their expertise helped identify the mysterious orphan in Seattle it took some time to sleuth out exactly who it was but it turned out it was a young two-year-old whale from a pod that we know very well and her sort of popular name is Springer and so this young whale seemed to have become orphaned we think her mother died and in that process she became separated from the rest of the matrilines the rest of the pod and wandered around until she ended up in Seattle Harbor the news spreads fast and Springer becomes an instant celebrity making headlines and the six o'clock news everyone it seems wants to know about this abandoned baby experts at the Vancouver Aquarium are called in to help the American government asks for advice from veterinarian dr. David huff who also has extensive experience with killer whales about every three weeks or so we would go down and go out in one of their boats and just kind of hang out with her dr. Hough suspects that Springer is sick the clue is her breath it has an acetone odor called ketosis when you got anywhere near the blow from her exhalation and sniffed it it was like a it was like opening a can of paint thinner springers bad breath might be caused by consuming her own body fat to survive a sign that she could be starving others in Seattle the environmental groups Orca Conservancy and the earth island Institute find the money to finance a rescue mission we're dealing with a wild animal she's never been restrained before she will resist that's her natural reaction Springer is about to make history for her species and our own by May about four months after being discovered swimming alone in Puget Sound it's clear that Springer the orphan killer whale needs to be rescued the problem is how Jeff foster the world's leading expert on capturing killer whales in the wild is called in to help foster brings his team to Seattle to plan their strategies when you deal with live animals and you never know how they're gonna respond and so it's important to have contingency plans Foster's first idea is to your springer into a canvas sling it's tricky like convincing a whale to put on a raincoat but it's the easiest way to get her into a boat Plan B is a giant underwater pen that can hold Springer if she refuses to swim into the sling the challenge here is convincing her to swim inside this will hang down it's 30 feet deep we have a lead line on the bottom always approximately 100 pounds now it's light enough that she can lift that LED line up if she does get into one of the corners so she can still take her breasts and everything but when you put this much net in the water there is that concern of it catching the currents like a sail and the stuff begging though um but the way they designed the net and hung the net it should hang fairly straight in the water if we're at SLAC tides it will take a small army of scientists and support boats to capture Springer plus a lot of money but why does this killer whale deserve the Royal Treatment part of the answer is that killer whales have become a Hollywood icon and in the Pacific Northwest especially their public animal number one once considered vermin on this coast these animals are now icons the wild west coast then people come from around the world to see them they live in societies that are complex and we can actually relate to them as being highly social mammals ourselves where they're young animals are tended by the adults in the group and and they have these very cohesive societies to the public springer is a baby in trouble to scientists she's the future of a species in trouble starting in the mid-nineties things started to change the southern residents first piqued and then started on a declining trend more recently the northern residents seemed to have gone on a similar declining trend and so this has kind of figured a few alarm bells why are there numbers going down the killer whales living near Seattle are in trouble 20% have died in the last 10 years leaving a mere eighty four Orca the northern residents often Coover Island have 200 members but their population too is declining Orca breeds slowly and today's losses could signify the beginning of the end Kenn Balcom has been watching the southern residents closely and he doesn't like what he sees using photo identification he has constructed a family tree of the southern residence we put up all the living whales there photographs are here and all these other spots are little tombstones of whales that were alive during the study but have died this is one little major line it's totally dead there's another major line up here that only has the Grand Moff surviving all the youngsters are dead so what this story is saying is that there's a very high mortality of young and middle-aged animals that should not be occurring we have the older animals are still here something happened that has reduced their fertility and their immune response they're just dying Malcolm's data shows clearly that young Orca like Sprenger are dying far too often and being alone doesn't help we realized Springer's long-term survival chances were very very poor and that likely we would need to intervene and get her out of that area back to Johnson straight up in this area where she might have a chance of reintegrating with her pod or related pod in British Columbia Springer would find more food cleaner water and a chance to reunite with her family but to get there now she'll have to be captured treated and released to do that Jeff foster needs to earn her trust he makes many trips out to visit Springer it's like a courtship Foster wants her to get to know the team as well as the ropes he'll be using the team gives Springer back rubs and hang the stretcher in the water hoping she'll get used to it but time is running out she was going in smaller and smaller area around the ferries and we all felt it was just a matter of time before she she got run over and either killed or or badly injured game plan is is just trying to get everybody out close as we can then we'll go over and interact with her and then start moving everything into position if we can now six months after Springer was discovered Foster and his team are told to capture the orphan killer whale they try a test run first to see if she's ready it's a great day you know we've been really lucky with the weather pattern this time of year usually in Seattle in June he could never depend on it at all conditions were right there really the only thing that's working against us right now is our tidal action and we have some of the lowest tides of the years so so that's going to work a little bit against this foster decides to use Plan B and attempt to lure the baby killer whale into the net enclosure it appears that the team's courtship has worked Springer happily swims up to the underwater cage but the baby Orca is playing hard-to-get she takes a quick look around and then changes her mind yeah I'm very happy that three different occasions she swam in and when actually into the enclosure itself would have been pretty easy to put a tail line on her but that's okay I think there was so much activity around she did cooperate and they'd go inside the enclosure and and then she you know lost interest in left it's a good start but to save Springer's life the rescue team will need to try again and the sooner the better

Channel: hateseaworld

Views: 65,496

Keywords: springer, orca, killer, whale, seaworld, zoo, animals, wildlife, tourism, sea, PCBS

Id: ebOYzPhA-0Y

Length: 13min 31sec (811 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 28 2011