Podcast Transcript: 3. How captivity changed everything, with Jason Colby

Justin Cox (00:01):

Welcome to Pod of Orcas, I'm Justin Cox and I'm here with SeaDoc Society board member, Kevin Campion as always. Kevin, how are you doing today?

New Speaker (00:08):

Yeah, I'm doing really good today. I'm pretty stoked to talk about Jason Colby - that might've been a spoiler alert, but yeah, I'm great.

Justin Cox (00:16):

It says it in the episode title, so I think people got it. As you said, we're talking to Jason Colby, who is a history professor at the University of Victoria among other things. He's also an author and a very good author. His most recent book, I believe, is "Orca - how we came to know and love the ocean's greatest predator". And in this episode, we kind of follow human perception of orcas over time. And Kevin, what was the kind of initial perception of orcas, by honestly, um, European white people, that came to this area?

Kevin Campion (00:51):

They were just viewed as this sort of ruthless predator that, uh, you know, one, I think a lot of the perception really came out of like the whalers and people like observing orcas killing, like these big, larger whales, you know, blue whales or humpbacks or whatever, which is like a pretty violent act, you know? Uh, and I think they just wrap that all up in the, your standard like, "Oh, I'm afraid of carnivores and afraid of predators" that has persisted forever.

Justin Cox (01:26):

This book follows the way that we've perceived orcas over time from beasts that needed to be killed, to amazing smart animals that could be kept in tanks for show, to amazing smart animals that should be out in the wild. And, "oh my God, why are we putting these animals in captivity", which is kind of where we are now, yeah?

Kevin Campion (01:46):

I like can't say enough about how much inspiration I take from that change of perception and, more I think from the timeline that it happened over, you know, he mentioned this, you bring it up people's perception of these whales and with it kind of whales in general flipped just over the course of 10 years, 20 years, something like that, like that is an amazing thing.

Justin Cox (02:13):

It's an amazing story because you're getting this thing told from the perspective of a kid whose dad worked in that world that was part of the process of taking whales into captivity. Who's then kind of recounting it as a historian. And also you're hearing a bit about the evolution of his dad's kind of like, feelings about what he was a part of over time. And you hear from some of these people that were involved in that toward the end of the book in ways that I think, and we get to it toward the end of our interview that are pretty effecting there, I get a little bit of chills talking about it.

Kevin Campion (02:51):

Seeing the pace that that change happened and thinking about some other like big environmental issues that we have climate change being the first one that pops into mind. And if the information is presented in the right way, like we, as a culture can change, and quickly if we need to. And that's a pretty powerful message.

Justin Cox (03:12):

Okay. So I'm gonna kick it over to Jason Colby. You can get the free SeaDoc Society newsletter at seadocsociety.org/newsletter to follow what's happening with the whales and this ecosystem, the Salish Sea as a whole. Um, you can also find us on all the social media apps, make sure to subscribe to this podcast, give it a rating and review that helps other people find it. Um, tell a friend about it and let's continue to tell the story of this cool species. Um, without further ado here is Jason Colby. Thanks, Kevin

Kevin Campion (03:44):

Yeah. Thank you, Justin.

Justin Cox (03:48):

This series is made possible by our amazing sponsors, Shearwater Kayak Tours, Rainshadow Solar, Two Beers Brewing Company, Deer Harbor Charters and the Averna family, Betsy Wareham and West Sound Marina, the San Juan County Marine Resources Committee, and Apple State Vinegar. Thank you also to an anonymous donor who sponsored in the memory of Nancy Alboucq. We are a science-based organization on Orcas Island and we are part of the Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. Jason Colby, welcome to the podcast.

Jason Colby (04:21):

Thanks for having me on great to be with you.

Justin Cox (04:23):

Jason is the author of "Orca - how we came to know and love the ocean's greatest predator", which is a very cool book. I'm curious if this book was something that was kind of in the back of your head for a long time, because a quick parenthetical, like you have a background in history and you're a very natural storyteller in a way that I think this book is jam packed with like citations. It's, it's very rooted in the history of this species, but you have a personal story connected to it. So it's like you have this skill set in history, but also you're kind of telling a personal story and I'm just curious how you ended up there.

Jason Colby (05:02):

That's a great way to put it actually. Um, I do have a very personal connection to this story, you know, having grown up on both sides of the border and the Salish Sea and my father being deeply involved in this, in this story, in this, in this industry, um, in the 1970s. Growing up I watched him, uh, be haunted by that story as, as people became more and more fond of orcas in the region and, and you know, a lot of that guilt about his past history and this, uh, really started to show, I think it certainly when I was growing up, you know, in the 1980s and early nineties. And so I'd say that even though I, you know, I went on to, to become a historian, you know, went to graduate school and got my PhD in history. Um, I did a different project for my first book, you know, entirely different project about the banana industry in central America. Um, this was a story that was knocking around in my head, um, probably my whole life, um, uh, that I needed to wrestle with.

Justin Cox (06:10):

So a major takeaway for me in reading the book is it's a complicated history because there a lot of the reason that we feel the way we feel about killer whales now, or the popular perception of killer whales in the Pacific Northwest has to do with capture and captivity, which is itself a sad part of history, but the perception we have now, wouldn't be the perception we have, if not for people connecting individually with these animals and the science that that came as a result of being around these animals while alive for the first time ever. Is that, how's that sound as a takeaway for someone having freshly read the book?

Jason Colby (06:52):

Yeah. But when you're writing history, when you're researching history, you come upon and have to confront these nuances and complexities and paradoxes constantly, you know, um, it's, it's very rarely a, a case of the black hats and the white hats and, you know, the clear villains and the clear heroes. And, you know, in this case, the history of, of orca capture and captivity in the Pacific Northwest is in what I often refer to as an unthinkable history for the region. It's a dark history that a lot of people in the region, you know, either don't know about, want to forget or often displace onto forces from outside the region like SeaWorld. But it was actually, you know, Pacific Northwesterners that sort of drove the story. And, you know, at the heart of it, the transformation and the context I've tried to show is that, you know, our relationship to, to animals more broadly, but certainly to, to marine wildlife up until the, the mid to late 1960s, certainly was really shaped by the extractive economy of the Pacific coast.

Jason Colby (07:55):

And so, you know, when people are looking at animals and marine life in particular, salmon, uh, even, you know, fur seals and such, um, and even great whales as sources of, commodities and, you know, and making a living, then you tend to view predators like orcas as threats either to your living or to, even to yourself. And so even in this region where we think about ourselves as very, very fond, and we are very, very fond of, the orcas that, that, you know, spend much of their time in this area. It wasn't always like that. And it's actually a very, very brief time ago in the span of history that, that people were eliminating, marine mammals, were targeting killer whales for elimination were, you know, shooting and harassing them for fun or out of fear. And it was actually this process of live capture that transformed that.

Justin Cox (08:56):

Yeah. So let's go there. So you do, you kind of start the book by going much further back in time to sort of talk about these, these species and this perception of killer whales and whales in general, but then the speed with which perceptions change from like the sixties through the next, it's like really in just a matter of decades, how do they go from being killer whales Orcinus orca, demon from the netherworld to take us through the sixties, to the eighties, nineties, and maybe even all the way up to Blackfish and, and now like,

Jason Colby (09:28):

Yeah, I mean, I guess I'd start off by saying that, you know, it's important to contextualize this about sort of indigenous history and the region first. And I know a lot of people assume that there's sort of a uniform fondness and close relationship between indigenous peoples in the area and orcas and other marine life, but, you know, it's complicated and shaped by their economics and cultures depending on where they were. And so, yeah, there were, there were different relationships that indigenous peoples had with in the area, depending on whether they were mostly, you know, uh, reef net fishers or, or river fishers, or whalers in the case of the Nuu-chah-nulth and the Makah. You know, the, the Makah for example, actually hunted, uh, orcas on occasion. But, um, there was, uh, you know, prior to sort of European settlement, there was a general, uh, perception of, of orcas along with other, you know, marine life as having a place here, having a place and, uh, you know, in a sense, a right to exist and the right to their space and their living.

Jason Colby (10:30):

And so in lots of ways the extractive economy I was talking about before sort of unsettles that and challenges that. And so to get back to your question, I just wanted that context in there first. Um, we do see a really rapid transformation, you know, in, in the mid to late 1960s of, um, you know, going from in this region, but also around the world, generally seeing orcas as, um, indistinguishable black and white masses with terrifying teeth. And this was actually, you know, the, the description of them and the floating assumptions about them were not just that they were mysterious and frightening, but in fact, dangerous to people. I know their stories never confirmed of them attacking people, you know, in the wild and what we see happen, and it's driven in the North, it's really driven by events in the Northwest, is this rapid transformation in human perceptions of, and relationships to killer whales.

Jason Colby (11:26):

And at the heart of it is a couple accidental, but, but also, uh, intentional captures of orcas alive for the very first time, as opposed to being shot and hunted or being killed by scientists, which was the only form of science in the region until, until then. And at the heart of this, I would argue is as you, and we see this actually in other dynamics in other forms of captivity is as you bring animals into human space, into urban space - you know the first, the first captivity of an orca of any length is in Vancouver in 1964, the animal known as Moby doll. Uh, and then the following year, uh, um, in Seattle, the Seattle Marine Aquarium brings another orca accidentally captured by fishermen in 1965, uh, named Namu. And in these cases, what we see is the close interaction with an individual orca in a captive setting. Doesn't just show people that, that these are not kind of mindless killing machines that will attack people at a moment's notice and given any chance, but that these are individual creatures with their own personalities, their own quirks. And once you make that step from thinking about animals as in indistinguishable and dangerous in the wild, to individual and having a name and interacting with you on an individual basis, it's part of a breaking down I would argue of, to a certain degree of the species divide.

Justin Cox (13:03):

When you, when you talk about Ted Griffin getting in the water with Namu off right there in Seattle, and a bunch of people seeing that you just, I mean, that's a, that's a flash point. That's a huge perception shift.

Jason Colby (13:15):

It is absolutely. I mean, that's, you know, if you, if you were to point to one moment in this, uh, story that is transformative for both popular views, cultural understandings of orcas, but also scientific, uh, perceptions as well. It is early, early September of 1965 when Ted Griffin, the owner of the Seattle Marine Aquarium, uh, slips into the water with Namu. This, this large male orca captured in BC. And in contrast to the predictions of scientists, uh, journalists and others Namu doesn't tear him limb from limb, but actually lets him swim around in the pool with him and eventually lets him brush him, touch him and, and indeed even ride him. And, and these are often, these events are often framed in the present context by, by the criticism of the, of the captivity industry and understandably so, but at the time, it's really important to understand that, uh, that the debate when, when Ted Griffin slipped into the water with Namu, the debate was not between whale watching and whale catching.

Jason Colby (14:27):

It was between whale catching and whale killing, and, and it's an entirely different framing or optic, uh, of a relationship with an orca than anyone had ever seen before. I mean, this is the first time that we know of that any human being had ever swam with and certainly touched and rode an orca. And it, it doesn't just make big news in the Northwest. I mean, Griffin goes on to write a very prominent article in National Geographic that's read by hundreds of thousands, maybe millions entitled "Making friends with a killer whale" that appears in 1966. And it's really the launching point for a lot of, um, the young people to read that those a lot of them go on to become orca scientists later in life.

Justin Cox (15:06):

Yeah. You talk, you talk about that. You put something so compelling to the head of a curious, uh, potential aspiring scientist, and you're gonna put some people on a path and it sounds like that happened. You said it sounds like many scientists, you talk to reference that article, right?

Jason Colby (15:21):

Yeah. And you know, Ken Balcomb is a great example. You know, Ken Balcomb, he runs the Center for Whale Research on, on San Juan Island sites that, he was not a kid at the time, you know, he was an adult, but, he cites that as a sort of transformative moment for him reading that. Uh, and then many others, you know, John Ford, who goes on to be a specialist in orca acoustics, uh, actually goes and sees Moby Doll in Vancouver when he's a nine-year-old, you know, Paul Spong gets his start at the Vancouver Aquarium, uh, working with captive orcas and large numbers of, of US-based scientists actually get their, their first chance to see and interact with a live killer whale up close on the Seattle waterfront. And we take this for granted now. And I think a lot of people assume that in those days scientists went out like they do now and observe, uh, wild whales, you know, from a distance and, you know, try to use variety of methods, unobtrusive methods to do their research. But in fact, most science until the mid to late 1960s was of the kill and dissect variety. Most whale scientists are working on whale stations, right. And, and actually killing and dissecting orcas even, so this is an entirely new way for scientists to perceive and interact with them as well.

Justin Cox (16:42):

Yeah. I mean, you, you say that once, uh, once a live whale was in captivity, that's the first time they can fully confirm the echolocation way they communicate and everything, right?

Jason Colby (16:51):

Yeah. I mean, the there's a lot of, you know, there are textbooks about marine mammals, especially small cetaceans, are filled with research that was sparked, derived, and really launched from captivity. You know, the confirmation that bottlenose dolphins use echolocation was, was proved in captivity. That likewise with, with orcas and first study of their diving physiology and such, and, um, you know, so much of what we actually know of the physiology of cetaceans, you know, comes from these early captive studies. Um, and that's not to say that, uh, research and captivity now has that same compelling case to be made, but rather this is making a historical point that this was transformative, not just for human perceptions of killer whales, but actually for scientific interactions with them.

Justin Cox (17:43):

You, you bring a lot of this nuance and sort of like the way things were perceived, the way that someone like Ted Griffin hopping in the water with Namu at that time is much different than we would see it now. Um, are you able to have those conversations about captivity with people who are, I mean, obviously, like you just said, there are a lot of reasons to be anti-captivity, the whole perception has changed. You couldn't make the same case now, do you find that people respond with an open mind to the, to that nuanced perspective, historical perspective that you share in the book or, yeah, I don't even know. I think, you know, what I'm kind of going for, but like how has the response been from anti-captivity people to a book that paints in the shades of gray like this?

Jason Colby (18:27):

Well, you know, that we're living in a highly polarized time, right? When, when people tend to read a snippet or not even a blurb about something and judge it and decide whether it's a hundred percent right. Or a hundred percent wrong. {Yep} I would say that for people that have actually read the book and have come to my talks, um, the, the response has been really wonderful because they understand what I'm doing and, and, and how I'm trying to help us understand this really iconic relationship we've developed with orcas. But also understand the complicated history and the shared responsibility we have toward the species and especially the populations in the Northwest that paid the price for our education. Um, and so I think when people hear that, um, they understand it. There's definitely, I mean, you can look up, you know, reviews of my book and you can definitely see people who have decided that they hated the ideas that I'm pursuing and the sort of the question I'm pursuing even before they opened the book.

Jason Colby (19:28):

Um, and you always run into that, but, you know, I think people that have read it carefully or listen to me understand that, you know, the purpose of the book is not to make an apology or a, you know, a defense of the captivity industry. Neither its history nor its present, but rather to understand how interwoven that history is with, with how we feel about not just orcas, but marine life now. And so it was a, it was a question of how much I should put myself in my father's story and my family story into the book, precisely because, you know, there was a concern that people would see that my father had this own history, you know, participating in, captures on both sides of the border and immediately decide that this is just, uh, a book trying to, um, sort of whitewash that history.

Jason Colby (20:18):

Of course, if you actually read the book, you know, I'm wrestling in a really difficult way, I think with the costs of this history, especially for killer whales, you know, I mean, in the book wraps up with, with, uh, a bit of a requiem for my own family's role in, in the plight of, of Southern resident killer whales. I wouldn't put that in if I was trying to celebrate the captivity industry, but I also don't think it helps anyone to, to villainize others and certainly not to villainize those that came before us. And so it was my hope that people of different generations in the Northwest would read it and be able to understand one another, a little bit better as opposed to the sort of black and white villainization.

Justin Cox (21:06):

It's history, right? And the purpose of history is to understand the past, to, to have a sense of what to do next, right, or to look ahead. And sometimes that past is, is ugly or that past is just complicated, but you have to have an accurate understanding of it to look ahead. And the undeniable truth is that captivity, this did happen and you can't lie to yourself and say that we didn't learn things about killer whales from captivity. It doesn't, you don't that doesn't need to be a defense of captivity, but it's true.

Jason Colby (21:44):

Certainly not a defensive of captivity now, right. And I think that people often make that conflation that I don't, that I never intended, which is, you know, looking at the history of captivity and its transformative impact is, is not necessarily a case that it should continue in the way it did in the past, uh, into 2020. Right. But I think that what you were just discussing there about the purpose of history is, is right on, and, and I often liken this, you know, in an oversimplified way to going to a therapist as an individual, you know, and you can, you can talk through your past your own personal past, and failings and mistakes and scars and wrestle with it and try to move forward as a better person. Or you can avoid that. You can project as many people often do, you know, your mistakes and your angst and your guilt about those onto other people.

Jason Colby (22:41):

And, and it, it's not the most positive path forward for you. And so as a, as a society, and certainly I thought about this regionally to a great extent, you know, the transnational region in the Salish Sea. I wanted people to wrestle with our own shared and broader and deeper regional responsibility for the, for the crisis that Southern resident orcas are facing rather than displace and project it as we often do on to SeaWorld onto the Miami Seaquarium, which, which holds the last Southern resident killer whale in captivity, Lolita, or, Tokitae. Um, I think it's really easy for people to sort of point to those distant institutions and say that they're the problem. They're the reason why our Southern resident killer whales are, are in danger of extinction, but really in so many ways, it's us, right. And it's not just the capture industry that and the damage it did, but, but, uh, the damage that we've done as consumers and residents of this area to this iconic population.

Justin Cox (23:42):

I think you get to that in the epilogue of the book that it's like

Justin Cox (23:46):

With the major threat now is not the Seaaquarium or SeaWorld. It's the people who live here. There are a hundred thousand people for every Southern resident killer whale and that just illustrates how complex the problem is, but it forces you to confront the question and forces you to confront the fact that there are a lot of, I don't know, things happening at the same time here that make this a complicated situation.

Bob Friel (24:10):

Hi. This is Bob Friel producer of the SeaDoc Society's video series, Salish Sea Wild. Follow SeaDoc's Joe Gaydos, as he explores the wonders of the Salish Sea, watch Joe shake hands with the world's biggest octopus and witness our wildest wildlife events. To see the show, just go to YouTube and search for Salish Sea Wild. Don't miss the episode where Dr. Joe makes a house call to check on the health of our beloved Southern resident killer whales.

Justin Cox (24:42):

I want to ask about a, um, this moment in the mid seventies or this moment in the seventies where SeaWorld comes to Puget Sound, it's just sort of an incredible scene. What's kind of the backdrop of this, this, uh, I think it's basically what kind of puts an end to capture and captivity in the state. If you were making it up. This almost sounds too hard to believe.

Jason Colby (25:05):

Yeah. I mean, there are, there are a lot of cinematic moments in this book, and I'm not saying that to pump myself up as a writer, but rather to say that, that, you know, the, there are a lot of scenes that I felt like, you know, almost wrote themselves with how sort of visual and striking they were. And, um, and this one, you know, the, the capture in Bud Inlet in Southern Puget sound in March of 1976 is definitely one of these where, you know, if, if you indeed tried to pitch this as a movie idea, um, someone, you know, an executive would find this implausible and, and it's really at the heart of it is, um, the story of live capturing had its high point in the late sixties and early seventies, especially in Puget Sound, some really contentious events happen, including the rounding up of nearly all of the Southern residents, you know, by Ted Griffin's company, which releases almost all of them, but still, you know, uh, there's there many taken out for captivity and several that are killed in the process accidentally.

Jason Colby (26:04):

And Ted Griffin leaves the business in 1972 because his partner, John Goldsberry also based in Seattle, and it takes over the Seattle Marine Aquarium takes over its capture operation - Namu Incorporated. And that in the process of the mid 1970s is acquired, is taken over by, by SeaWorld, which is looking for a capture platform to be able to supply not just at San Diego franchise, but it's opened up a new franchise in Ohio as well. Yeah. So it's looking for a reliable supply and that that team owned by SeaWorld, but really it's still staffed by the Northwesterners and the fishermen and such who had done the previous captures makes a capture in Bud Inlet right off of the Washington State Capitol of Olympia. And, you know, as luck would have it, or serendipity would have it, this is just days within days of when legislators in Olympia at that State Capitol are debating the possibility of making Puget Sound and a whale sanctuary and orca sanctuary.

Jason Colby (27:09):

And it's also just a couple of days before a, uh, an orca symposium is scheduled to be held just a couple of miles away at Evergreen State College. And so all of these events sort of collide or intersect to create this extraordinary moment where, where, uh, the SeaWorld team captures most of a pod of what we now know are transient or, or mammal eating Biggs killer whales, and tried to hold them there to select them out, to measure which ones they can take under regulations to take back to SeaWorld. And while this is happening, protestors start surrounding the capture site in kayaks and on the beach and start demanding the whales release and, and even more sort of serendipitously when the capture happened, uh, an aide to governor Dan Evans, uh, Ralph Monroe, the long-standing now, uh, former Secretary of the State of Washington was out on a boat with friends when this happened.

Jason Colby (28:08):

So he rushed for the governor and to, to, uh, Attorney General Slade Gordon and ask them to intervene, which they do. They ended up suing the US government, which had given SeaWorld the permits for the capture as well as SeaWorld. Uh, and this becomes this extraordinary drama played out, um, not just in the courts, uh, in Seattle, but on the front pages of, of Seattle newspapers, the Post Intelligence, or in the Seattle Times. And it's this extraordinary moment where I think, um, a lot of people in, certainly in, in Western Washington express their conviction that this kind of relationship is kind of violent, you know, rounding up of an increasingly iconic species is simply not acceptable to them and they're going to oppose it. And eventually they drive SeaWorld out, SeaWorld agrees, never to catch killer whales in Washington state waters, again.

Justin Cox (29:01):

This directly leads to like concrete policy in the next couple of years, right?

Jason Colby (29:06):

There's, there's, you know, continuing issuing of permits and captures, uh, SeaWorld is going to go to Iceland, um, sort of out of the public eye to capture killer whales for their facilities, but also going to try to go on to Alaska in the early 1980s. But it's actually that, um, this sort of searing moment, this capture in, Bud Inlet right next to Olympia, that galvanizes a lot of activists and, you know, among them Ralph Monroe, you know, who, who then intervene and, and try to stop SeaWorld wherever it goes. And so, um, it galvanizes activists and it also makes government regulators, you know, increasingly more leery of, of issuing these kinds of capture permits, especially I should emphasize capture permits where facilities like SeaWorld could collect wildlife within public view. I mean, I think that's one of the huge transformative aspects of this is that, you know, these captures were happening in the Salish Sea in the view of the public, and they were spectacles of violence in the eyes of many people, you know, and of course whaling is still taking place off shore, but it's outside the public view.

Jason Colby (30:23):

And whereas these are, you know, in an area where there are increasing numbers of, you know, recreational boaters out, you know, on the waters and they're there to enjoy sea life and not watch it sort of traumatized and captured.

Justin Cox (30:37):

This podcast is kind of in the tradition of, I think that telling stories just really matters and I personally am extremely fascinated in it, obviously you are as well. The thing I really enjoyed about the book is that it's basically gathering and rounding up all these other pieces of culture, whether it's movies or documentaries, or just documented moments or National Geographic articles, or, uh, what's the, uh, the smutty magazine?

Jason Colby (31:01):

Stag magazine with the, with the cover of, uh, the menacing, the menacing killer whale attacking the two shirtless guys on the life raft.

Justin Cox (31:11):

I think you talk about like, this is what, what do you talk about the connection to the Navy with that?

Jason Colby (31:17):

Yeah, well, the, that's a, that's a sort of fascinating moment and, and, and truth be told that's a more sort of inductive guess on my part about that connection. But in December, 1953, the, the magazine Stag, which is kind of a predecessor to Playboy, although it's a little bit more of a adventure magazine at the time, um, usually had menacing creatures on the cover, you know, attacking brave men and, and, uh, the December of 1953 issue has, has an orca attacking these two bare chested guys on a life raft. You know, it's about to clearly devour them. And it's only within months of that issue coming out that, um, US service men based in, uh, in a NATO base in Iceland participate in an attack on, on orcas and Icelandic waters at the request of, of Iceland's government. And I think it's, I think it's a fair guess that, that at least a number of those, uh, service men in Iceland, might've seen that cover of Stag magazine, you know, within, within weeks of that. And they, you know, they ended up over the, over the next few years actually ended up, um, strafing and machine gunning, probably hundreds of orcas in Icelandic waters. And so it's a bit of guesswork there, but it's, you know, a clear connection between sort of a media image and actual acts of violence.

Justin Cox (32:43):

Has that always been a fascination to you, or what do you think is the value of, of communicating and storytelling in our perception of a species like this in a species where our perception has shifted so quickly in the grand scheme of history over just the last, I mean, in a, in a matter of decades, really.

Jason Colby (33:03):

Someone who was trained in kind of media studies, uh, would have, would have approached the story differently. And might've done a better, a more nuanced job with some of the media imagery and storytelling that I'd bring in. You know, I mean, obviously as a historian, I'm trying really hard to, you know, use those sources in a sensitive way and contextualize them. And, and it was really important for me to get as much of that material, including the visual sort of media images, um, in, for the readers to give a, give a sense of, you know, how this imagery and how these perceptions are changing. And to utilize that with what I think, you know, comes more naturally to me, which is telling these, these stories of people in their transformations and their kind of their experiences, um, especially through oral history, which is a real sort of core of the book is, is me sitting down with these people and, and hearing their stories.

Jason Colby (33:59):

But what I will say is, you know, a big challenge of that is a lot of, you know, animal historian, if you could call them that, you know, people that are doing the, you know, historians working on the human relations history of human relations with animals, they will often focus on sort of the human, you know, the discourse, if you will, the imagery, the way that people construct, um, images of, of animals and particular species as part of how we construct ourselves as humans. But the challenge for me was doing that and tracing this transformation of people's perceptions of this, of this species, but at the same time, actually trying to tell at least a sense, give a sense of the lived experience of these killer whales themselves, you know, who are living creatures with their own cultures and choices and actions that we can't necessarily understand, but whose certainly affected history, affected their own history, affected human history. And I draw on science a lot for that. And so I'm trying to combine, I guess, you know, these very human sources, you know, media and such, and, and the narratives that people produce, which with, with their intersection, with these orca stories that, that, you know, I can't interview orcas, um, obviously, but I try to put together a lot of their lives and how they might have experienced this.

Justin Cox (35:18):

Yeah. Um, but I'm in there. I think there's a Victor Scheffer quote in there that says, seeing them in aquariums individualize these creatures, they were no longer just whales in the abstract. And that, I mean, that alone kind of gets at what you're talking about. Your, we can't entirely tell their stories, but if you have individual animals with individual things, people observing that are basically completely reshaping the way we think the way they think about a species ton of power in that.

Jason Colby (35:44):

Absolutely. And, and, you know, if you know who Victor Scheffer was, um, the power of that becomes even more profound. You know, there's a guy that was at the marine mammal biological laboratory in Seattle and his life's work really was managing and regulating the US government's fur seal harvest and approval off islands, you know, so basically overseeing the slaughter and processing of tens of thousands of marine mammals. Uh, he also worked as other scientists did there with the commercial whalers, uh, that we're working out of California. And then, but then he goes on to be, you know, at the head of the marine mammal commission goes through his own transformation later in his career, you know, writes a book called "Year of the Whale", which is still a celebrated book. Um, and he himself, you know, becomes a critic of capture, even though most of his career was about killing. That shows, I love that quotation cause that comes, you know, long after he's retired where he's, he's actually reflecting on this transformation. And even he himself who was critical of, of capture and captivity is acknowledging the role that it played in even a scientist like him and his transformed perceptions.

Justin Cox (36:56):

You're talking specifically about someone like that, who is basically a human embodiment of that contradiction around this species.

Jason Colby (37:04):

Absolutely. And, and, you know, it's, it's definitely my conviction and the way that I practice history and the way I write to trust my readers with the connections that I help draw for them. It's not to club them over the head with sort of prescriptive, uh, uh, you know, analysis. And so, uh, you know, I, I aimed for a book that was inviting to read and suggestive. Um, and, and I don't really close it out with a prescription of what I demand that they take from it. Um, but I did hope to, you know, unsettle some assumptions and, and hopefully encourage a shared sense of responsibility toward the, you know, not just, uh, not just, uh, an appreciation for the transformation and how rapid and complete it was in our relationship with orcas, but a sense of a shared responsibility for the marine ecosystem that nourishes us. And that's much more of a subtext of the book, but I try to model it through my family and, and, you know, my, my family obviously being haunted by this and, and accepting the responsibility for it's part of the damage. And, you know, I'm, I'm trying to model that for readers as a way to, for us to accept a, a regional responsibility for, for, you know, these creatures that deserve to have a place here too, you know, and, and, and deserve to be able to make a living here too.

Justin Cox (38:32):

Yeah. A conversation I had few days ago with Joe Gaydos, our science director, whom you've met, who says hi, by the way. But it's like around, around something, like, say, say Free Willy - a massive movie that has a big impact on, on the cultural, the general cultural perception of, of killer whales in a way that kind of, which is sort of indisputably, a good one, right? Like people, it, it basically introduces a lot of people to the idea of captivity and elicits a lot of, um, sympathy and empathy for this species, but that doesn't change the fact that a moment like that, a story like that, uh, uh, a thing to put in the culture like that isn't possible without captive killer whales. That's just true. Right?

Jason Colby (39:16):

Absolutely. It's I mean, you know, for those that are old enough to remember, you know, Free Willy had a comparable impact of Blackfish, right. You know, they're, they're 20 years apart, 1993 and 2013. Ones a documentary, but Free Willy is a feature film. But, you know, for those that, that saw it as kids, it's a really iconic film, not just, you know, it opens with a montage of, of, uh, J pod, you know, the Southern resident, uh, pod here. Um, and then it actually sort of frames a lot of the understandings of this because, you know, those whales are captured by, you know, these kind of faceless dastardly, uh, fishermen who are, who are, you know, selling them to, captivity. But, but the, the story itself, the kind of core story about this troubled teen who has this personal transformation and redemption through this close relationship with this orca, I mean, the paradox of the film is that's not possible without captivity, you know, and you know, that's not to celebrate captivity.

Jason Colby (40:15):

It's just to say that even a film that's on the face of it heavily critical of captivity and ends with the improbable sort of leap to freedom that really has, uh, even that is not possible without captivity and the production of the film. Wasn't possible that captivity, of course, it's done mostly in Mexico, you know, at a captive facility. And the story itself relies upon captivity. I mean, you, you can't interact with orcas that closely in the wild. And what I find interesting about that is, you know, the it's art imitating life in the sense that, you know, that's not unlike the transformations we see with Paul Spong and Bob Hunter, you know, who's, close interactions with, with Skana who was a Southern resident killer whale in the Vancouver Aquarium proved so personally transformative to them that they become, you know, the shock troops in the anti-whaling campaign, especially against the Soviet Union.

Jason Colby (41:13):

And, you know, in Hunter's case, you know, he just has one very close, well, he has a couple, but one really searing transformative moment with Skana where she briefly grips his head with her teeth, and then that's all, and he describes that as you know, uh, he writes about it as that's his moment of transformation. And, and it's hard to imagine those two becoming the kind of messiahs of the anti-whaling movement that they've become, and including leading the way toward the moratorium in the 1980s, without having that close encounter with Skana. And I think that's something that historians can do well, which is trace these personal stories and make these connections and wrestle with these questions of contingency, you know, and I think a lot of people, when they look at history, assume that what happened was inevitable. And so we just need to figure out why, what was inevitable happened, but that's not actually how it works. I mean, history is full of nuances and contingency and, and one can ask the counterfactual of what would have happened if Paul Spong hadn't had the opportunity to work with Skana.

Justin Cox (42:19):

Yeah. I find all of that endlessly compelling. And of course it would be, it would be crazy to say, uh, "Free Willy changed a lot of people's perception of captivity for the better. And therefore it's a great case for why we should have more killer whale captivity." That's crazy. But, but it doesn't mean that first statement isn't true. And it's the same thing for the Paul Spong and, and Skana, and like, it's, it's a, uh, it's a running thread through the book. It's just, this is part of the history.

Jason Colby (42:50):

How intertwined captivity is with our knowledge and fondness of orcas in ways that we often want to deny. Right.

Justin Cox (43:00):

Yeah. And, and I mean, you're, you're weaved in with all of that is one particularly kind of haunting thing that I read that just has kind of stuck with me. So I, I typed it out is I think you're talking about Lolita the last, last remaining Southern resident in Florida who has received a ton of news coverage and is, uh, uh, think a lot of people know Lolita's story is what does - I can't remember which researchers is looking at her in her tank, but it's like the tank, the condition is good, the water looks clean, yada yada, but - "what does a life spent alone do to a complex social animal hardwired for acoustic stimulation? Do young orcas fear silence the way children fear the dark?" This is an orca separated from her family while young in a tank in captivity. That's, that's like haunting, that's a haunting thought.

Jason Colby (43:54):

Yeah, it's a great passage for illustrating what I meant when I said I couldn't have written this book until I was at a certain stage in life. And so that's a passage that I simply wouldn't have imagined penning, uh, until I was a father myself. And, um, I did go to Miami with Ted Griffin. Um, that's that scene where he's there with me, um, and this man who captured her, right. Uh, that was that that scene took place in January, 2016. So even then that's five years ago almost and she had been captivity for 45 years, almost 46 years. And, uh, I, I certainly wrestled with how to understand that when I was there and how to write about it afterward. Um, and, and I will say that, you know, my, my experience as a dad, you know, watching little human creatures, you know, come into the world and realize how important their families are to them and, and, and how they wrestle with their fears. It was hard not to see that. And that's partly what I mean by the breaking down of species barriers and it's, and it's uncomfortable for scientists often, you know, to, to acknowledge that, you know, animals experience emotions or grieve, you know, their losses in a way akin to people. But, but I actually think it it's a really useful exercise to, to make that leap. And so, yeah, that there were a lot of passages in this book, honestly, that left me crying afterwards. Um, and that was one of them.

Justin Cox (45:31):

Yeah. It's a, it's a heavy thought. Um, okay, well, as we wind this down, I've really enjoyed this by the way. Um, it doesn't feel like the right way to ask to, as we end this, like you talk about like, what's our moral obligation, what do we owe them? Um, because like you said, the population, I mean, who knows after a coronavirus pandemic, what's going to happen with the populations of these massive city centers, but our human population in this area continues to rise. The kind of the chapter in our narrative with Southern resident killer whales is now at, we have in the low seventies, um, generally trending downward over the last 20 years with, uh, as, as we're covering in this podcast series kind of threats coming at them from all directions. What's your, where, where do you land on moral obligation of people living in this area, or sort of just a, an individual human being, listening to this podcast or reading your book like going about their, their life.

Jason Colby (46:35):

It's a big question, but I have a, hopefully a way to answer that quickly, you know, as you said, it's important to remember that this is a population that, that recovered quite a bit into the late 1990s before they've crashed in the last 20 years. And, and that crash has nothing to do with captivity, its directly and everything to do with what's happened to their ecosystem in this growing area. This is a region that people move to or come to visit from all over North America and the world to be closer to nature, but that has an inevitable impact on nature. Right? And I think that we tend to forget when we're living in cities, how much our presence there as consumers, as polluters, displaces, the very nature that we treasure, right? Just to give you a quick example, uh, people love going to the pike place market to see that sort of cornucopia of seafood.

Jason Colby (47:30):

And, and there's almost this, uh, this extravaganza and celebration of, of all the seafood that's available to consumers in Seattle. And I think people tend to forget that, you know, very little of the seafood that you see there is actually from Washington state. You know, it's mostly from it's coming from lots of places, mostly Alaska, precisely because we've devastated and over fished and drained the Salish Sea of, you know, its rich resources. And so when you look at orcas, at Southern resident orcas in particular who rely, you know, overwhelmingly on Chinook salmon runs, you're talking about a species that, you know, for a population that you know, for, for thousands of years has had this reliable culture and understanding of where to find this food. And it's been very efficient. And in the blink of an eye ecologically, we've changed that. Even as we've devastated their population.

Jason Colby (48:28):

So the way I often think about this is, um, the Southern resident killer whales are in my mind without question the most significant and transformative population of cetaceans on the earth for their impact on humans, on human culture, on human history. They profoundly changed us but they paid an astonishingly high price, and continue to pay it an astonishingly high price for our mistakes and our education. And the only way to put that, I would say, is that we have a moral debt to them. And that debt, you know, there's lots of threats um, you know, but for me, you know, at the core of that debt is an obligation that we have to make sure that they have enough to eat, enough for their offspring to eat, you know, a way to make a living in this space that we have denuded and polluted and emptied.

Jason Colby (49:26):

Um, and that for us means, you know, we shouldn't be catching either for sport or for commercial gain. We shouldn't be catching local Chinook salmon runs until we know that they have enough to eat. You know, I grew up as a fishermen and in Washington state, I know how iconic that is for people, but you know, this is the price we need to pay. You know, we need to think about removing dams that will help replenish those runs. And I guess the, the, the thought I always like to leave people with, because, you know, certainly for those who really care about the environment and especially for kids growing up who are worried about climate change and environment, it's really important to give people hope, as opposed to just spreading, you know, this dark, horrible news, uh, all is lost. And I would, I would really emphasize that, you know, that we have seen that nature can heal if we give it space and time, and that's true of the Southern resident orcas. And that, and that's true of, you know, salmon runs. If we just, you know, let let some of these rivers heal and return to closer to their natural state, you know, nature can heal if we give it a chance. It's that we keep it under siege. Um, that that sort of creates these, these sort of this dark pessimism, but, but it really can, we can turn things around.

Justin Cox (50:45):

Well, this was a huge pleasure to talk to you and really enjoyed the book. The book is called "Orca, how we came to know and love the ocean's greatest predator". Um, where can people find more about you, Jason?

Jason Colby (50:58):

I'm probably not a very good self promoter in the sense that, uh, you know, I have my websites on the University of Victoria, you know, where I'm professor and chair of the department of history. Um, you can find a bit more about me there. Um, and you can certainly look up the book at Oxford University Press's website as well.

Justin Cox (51:19):

Very cool. Well, I enjoyed this and we'll be in touch.

Jason Colby (51:22):

All right. Thank you so much.

Justin Cox (51:24):

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