You can learn a lot from killer whales, or orcas, about how to live your life, Alexandra Morton believes. They have seen her through happiness and tragedy- including the death of her husband Robin, who drowned while trying to film them underwater. She started her career in 1976 working for noted dolphin researcher John C. Lilly in California, and has lived in British Columbia since 1984. Her book, Listening to Whales: What the orcas have taught us, is published by Ballantine Books.
You’re an unusual scientist in that you’ve never taken a graduate degree and have no academic appointment …
Yes. I don’t actually recommend it. But it has allowed me to keep an open mind, which might be harder if you specialise. If you’ve invested in a very focused education, you’re going to see the world through that glass. Not getting paid has been pivotal, and now I’m almost obsessed with it, because as soon as you get paid, you have strings. Nobody’s responsible for anything I say, so nobody’s trying to make me be quiet. I’m not representing a university, I’m not representing any large institute, I don’t have a corporate sponsor. I am funded a bit by the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society in Britain, but not enough to make a salary. That comes mostly from writing and living cheaply. I get a huge amount of protein from the ocean, I get a lot of electricity from the sun, and there are no restaurants, movie theatres or toy stores to tempt us.
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You began your research on killer whale communication by studying captive animals at aquariums. What led you to move out here?
I thought as an 18-year-old that I could walk up to a tank of killer whales and figure out what they were saying. I admire the confidence of that young woman, but now I know you’ve got to come to their natural environment. You’ve got to know what’s normal for them. This place was more ideal than I knew. It was fantastic for the first few years. Nobody knew what killer whales did in the winter, so every sighting gave me new information. I learned so much. In the summer the whales have this river of salmon to sustain them, and they’re very sociable. But in the winter they’re quieter, they form little groups and forage around kelp beds. The ideal situation for me is if there’s only one family in the area, with one dialect. That way I can keep track of everybody.
What kind of culture do killer whales have?
It depends on what they eat and how they survive. There are mammal-eating and fish-eating whales and they are genetically distinct. Fish-eaters are loud and there’s no limit to the size of their families, because they’re preying on species that school in large numbers. They are allowed to talk a lot, because fish don’t have the brainpower to avoid killer whale calls. Mammal-eaters have a “law” that restricts them to a family of five or less- that way they’re harder to spot. They adhere to this strictly, so if a family exceeds five, somebody has to emigrate. And they rarely talk. The only time I’ve heard mammal-eaters talk is when their prey is incapacitated or when they’re full. Then they can be quite social and vocal.
Do you think killer whale societies have the equivalent of art or high culture?
If they do, it’s acoustic. Sometimes when they’re calling they almost appear to create a sound sculpture. It’s easily fragmented if there’s boat traffic, but in some areas here their voices will echo five or seven times. They’ll start interplaying with the echoes, putting sounds out as the sounds come back. I find it hauntingly beautiful.
You were involved this summer in the return of a stray orphaned killer whale named Springer from off the coast of Seattle to her clan in British Columbia after many months of separation. What did you hear?
It was a phenomenal opportunity. I wanted to be there to record Springer’s first conversation with the wild whales. When Springer first heard them, she got really excited and began to cry out in a very unorganised way. Then she seemed to collect her thoughts, and let loose the most beautiful stream of perfect calls of her clan. She was sending out an identifying signal: I am A73 of the A4 clan of the Northern Residents. When she did that, the other whales just zipped up; no signals sent. The rules of killer whale society say that if a whale speaks your language she is of your group, but they still had to figure out where this whale came from.
Later, the oldest matriarch swam right at her, and the next thing I see is Springer fleeing. About seven hours later, circumstances forced the matriarch to call out, and when Springer heard her- the same whale that she had fled from- she ran after her and joined her. That was so interesting to me, because it spelled out very clearly that she needed to hear that whale. Seeing meant nothing. Whether the story ends happily remains to be seen.
You’ve said killer whales may be as intelligent as we are, yet their language doesn’t appear to have a huge vocabulary. What makes you think they’re so smart?
Some people argue that they’re not that intelligent. A fellow I worked with at the US Navy believed that whales are no more intelligent than pigs. Then why aren’t their brains the size of a pig’s in relation to their body weight? And why would a killer whale need 15 years of childhood? Brain size is a dangling question. A large brain is an extremely expensive item to be carrying around in the ocean. For a mammal to carry a brain that large, it’s got to be used. It may be required as a memory bank of the coastline, and they do seem to have an intimate knowledge of the coast. But it seems an awful lot of brainpower for that.
But can you call their signalling a language?
There are indications that they have a real language. Whales can lie side by side and have long acoustic exchanges that are not territorial displays or mating calls. But it’s not a language like ours. It’s going to take a blind leap to figure out how it works. One call I’ve studied confused me for a long time, because it occurred in such a wide range of behaviours that didn’t seem to have any relationship to each other. Then it struck me that in all those behaviours, each whale in the group was focused on the same thing.
The call is associated with the act of synchronicity- whether it’s turning around as a group, beginning a conversation or attending a birth. Synchronicity is a fundamental characteristic of orcas. It springs from the need to breathe with your mother to survive. If a baby whale doesn’t roll to the surface and open its blowhole at exactly the same instant as its mother, it will not learn where the air is and it will die.
In your book you mention occasions when the whales seemed to know what you were thinking and responded to it …
There have been these uncanny experiences. For example, once I was at a whale meeting and they talked about capturing an entire pod- Springer’s family. I felt extremely defensive, and said, “Excuse me, that family has had enormous difficulty, and I don’t think that’s right.”
The next day I was out with that same family of whales. They started circling my boat so I couldn’t move. I was getting scared, because this is exactly what they do when they’re hunting. Then they started to move. Three times they went through the one body of water where I’d said at that meeting that whales never went. It was as though they were showing their approval. I know that’s hard to believe, but whales have never corralled me like that before or since.
Yet when your husband drowned while filming underwater, one of the whales had a chance to save him and didn’t. What do you make of that?
I was angry at the whales for a long time, particularly that one female. She was scared- that’s the way I read it later. She went in right towards him, and then she was out of there. She surfaced right at the bow of the boat, and I immediately knew something was wrong. She may have given me a “heads-up” that I didn’t read properly. There were two of us who could have helped him- her and me. Neither of us did. I was angry at both of us. However, I think whales in general are confused about our inability to hold our breath.
What have you learned about orcas that you apply to your personal life?
Killer whales are very capable organisms. I don’t even know that they have fear. I, on the other hand, am a fearful person, particularly after the death of my husband. The whole Universe seemed very random to me after that, and out of control. It’s been good for me to be around these very confident animals. I’ve learned a lot from whales about raising children. For example, I think it’s a requirement for intelligent young mammals that they stay close to their parents. That way they grow up far more confident and capable.
How has salmon farming affected the whales?
I hear the whales maybe twice a year from my house. It used to be twice a week, before the salmon farming industry arrived. For the first few years it was all OK and I thought, this is good, it will bring jobs and more families. Then the whole thing started to unravel. The farms brought parasites, bacteria and viruses, and the loud underwater noise-makers they use to repel the seals also drove the whales away. This industry would never have been allowed on land. You’d have a huge excrement smear, and you’d have escapees wandering around with oozing sores.
There are more fish farms here every year. The place is going straight down. What it boils down to is that the alternative to farmed salmon-wild salmon- are a political nightmare. You have to negotiate with the US, the aboriginal communities and all the major industries, because of the watersheds. Salmon need so much habitat.
I think the politicians thought they could continue having their wild salmon at the same time as mining, logging and damming. But the thing about salmon is that they make up the loss of nutrients from the watershed by bringing in nutrients from the open ocean. A huge percentage of nitrogen in the trees here is from salmon. If you want to continue cutting trees, you’re going to require wild salmon.
You must have noticed these changes more than anyone …
I have been here a long time. You can come out here and think, this place looks beautiful. But when you’re staring down into the water for 18 years, you begin to see the warning signs. I feel lucky that I know where I want to be. I have a place in the world that I love. I think it’s human nature to be attached to a place. I feel totally cut off when I leave. I just like being with the whales. I feel at peace with the world when I’m with them. They are my plumb line in life. As long as I put myself in the path of those whales, I’m in the right place. They are where I belong.