a day ago
How a group of orcas were captured — and some freed — in B.C. waters over 50 years ago
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March 1, 1970. It was a blustery, cold morning off the southern tip of Vancouver Island when four men on a boating trip spotted something unusual in the waves.
A white dorsal fin.
A white orca.
Seeing the creatures is extremely rare; in 2020, Stephanie Hayes, a marine biology PhD candidate with the University of Alaska Fairbanks, told CBC News only about 10 white orcas had been recorded in history.
This white orca and its pod, four black and white killer whales, became known as the Pedder Bay 5.
Enter Bob Wright. The 40-year-old master angler was also the owner of Sealand of the Pacific, an aquarium in Oak Bay, B.C., just outside Victoria on Vancouver Island's southern tip. The aquarium was a major part of Wright's growing waterfront empire at the Oak Bay Marina, about a five kilometre drive from downtown Victoria.
A pair of young whale trainers and budding conservationists happened to be accompanying Wright that day in 1970: 25-year-old Don White and 20-year-old Graham Ellis, who would go on to become one of the world's leading experts on orcas.
The three men would soon find themselves on opposite sides of the killer whale capture and captivity debate.
In his series Whale Tale, CBC's Grant Lawrence shares the story of the Pedder Bay 5, how they were herded and captured, and how two of them were released — a mystery on B.C.'s coast that remains to this day.
