Once they’re first born, the intercourse of child orcas is generally a thriller to their observers, as a result of it could possibly solely be decided by wanting on the markings on their bellies within the genital space, which is totally different for women and men. When Balcomb confirmed up in his 20-foot analysis boat—which all of them appeared conversant in—the brand new moms would carry their infants over to him.
“Within the case of moms and calves, we had moms and calves rolling up and displaying us their undersides,” he advised me. “I believe they have been conscious that we have been inquisitive about what was occurring, they usually have been conscious that realizing what intercourse a brand new child was could be a part of what could be fascinating to our little monkey minds.”
I do know different whale scientists who generally accompanied him on his census-gathering excursions, and have been astonished by the habits. “They appeared to know that Ken was making an attempt to see what intercourse the calf was, and they might intentionally carry the calf over to his boat and it could then present him its stomach, then they’d go on their means,” one scientist advised me. “Damnedest factor I ever noticed.”
The photographs have been the important thing to all the pieces Balcomb did, and in some ways embody his astonishing scientific legacy. Balcomb didn’t invent the strategy of photograph identification as a supply of census knowledge for wild animal populations—that honor belongs to his good friend and frequent colleague, the late Canadian scientist Michael Bigg. However it was Balcomb who first put it to work within the Nineteen Seventies, and compiled the astonishing huge database in regards to the Southern Residents piece by piece over the following many years.
I described all this in my guide Of Orcas and Men: What Killer Whales Can Teach Us (a guide that couldn’t have existed with out Balcomb’s work), in a chapter about how sure human beings have performed key roles in reworking our understanding of killer whales:
Ken Balcomb is one such advocate. A local of California, Balcomb arrived within the San Juan Islands within the Nineteen Seventies with a contract from the Nationwide Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration to gather info on killer whales. Quickly he and Bigg have been working collectively to compile a whole census of the Southern Residents, which they accomplished in 1976.
”Our mandate was simply, depend ‘em up,” remembers Balcomb. “However inside three or 4 encounters, I noticed that it was worthwhile persevering with our research, taking a look at whales rising up, to see how briskly they grew up. Mainly, it’s like having all of the fish within the fish bowl that you could take a look at.
“I wished to ask extra lasting questions that have been of curiosity to different biologists – how lengthy do they reside, what number of infants have they got, what’s their habits. And because it seems, they’re a society, with a tradition and intelligence.”
Balcomb turned enmeshed within the combat to guard the Southern Residents from captures. It was that ‘76 census, displaying that solely about 70 whales remained in all the neighborhood, mixed with Bigg’s related work with Northern Residents, that led to the shutdown of Washington and Canadian waters to orca captures.
Balcomb stayed on San Juan Island. In 1985, he purchased a chunk of waterfront property on its western facet, a spot the place whales are incessantly seen, again when such houses have been reasonably priced, and transformed it into his Heart for Whale Analysis (CWR). Along with his personal work conducting a wide range of analysis initiatives, the CWR, from a two-story home overlooking Haro Strait, with a piece lab up the hill, hosted summer-long gatherings of Earthwatch (an environmental group) volunteers, who would exit on Balcomb’s boats (often an enormous trimaran that had been donated to the middle years earlier than) to look at whale behaviors, take images, and file sounds. In between, Balcomb turned concerned in a broad vary of whale-research and rescue efforts, together with coping with beached beaked and minke whales within the Bahamas and humpbacks within the Atlantic. He’s additionally performed a key position in constructing orca census information in different elements of the world, notably in southeastern Alaska.
These days, a bit of grayer within the beard, he’s extra retiring, content material to take care of the annual census of Southern Residents and monitor their well-being with the assistance of his core staff, however there are at all times initiatives popping up that want his consideration. Over the winter of 2012-13, he spent a lot of his time pursuing the Okay pod all the way down to Monterey after Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists efficiently satellite-tagged considered one of its members.
Balcomb appreciated to explain how the animals shook him out of his scientific coaching, making him understand that pure knowledge assortment misses one thing important about them—notably their astonishing intelligence and the tradition it produces—and the depraved humorousness with which they comport themselves:
Certainly, Ken Balcomb has skilled a lot the identical form of epiphany in his dealings with the whales themselves: “They at all times appear to search out methods to shock me,” he says. Principally, he says he’s endlessly impressed by the orcas’ personal flexibility and willingness to study, in addition to the depth of their empathy.
“Essentially the most superb stuff was when A73 (Springer) was down in Puget Sound, and Luna up in Nootka Sound. I had gone to see Luna with Graham and John in December, after the marine mammal convention, and he was positively in search of human contact. No more than ten days later, Mark Sears referred to as me and stated we’ve acquired this little lone orca down in Puget Sound. I went down there and went out with Mark; the day earlier than when he had seen her, she was enjoying with a stick, so we boated on the market and located that stick. And there was Springer enjoying with it. After some time Mark would take the stick, and he or she would reply. I gave her a sign, and he or she responded in form by rolling over. When it got here time to seize her, she simply allow us to do it. She didn’t combat in any respect. She was prepared for something that we did.”
He nonetheless is making an attempt to know the position that killer whales play of their surroundings: “Perhaps they do just like the First Nations folks thought they did at first –they exit and discover the fish and herd them in. They usually know sufficient to not eat all of them. In actual fact, they solely eat about 10 p.c of them. They know that it simply doesn’t work, should you eat all of them. And whether or not or not they experimented with that eons in the past, I don’t know, however actually of their administration of issues, they’re very, very conservative. They’re additionally conservative of their habits in that they don’t threat their lives.
“I wouldn’t be shocked if there’s some sort of stewardship concerned. They’ve been very, very profitable for a really very long time.”
What stays with him in all his dealings, he says, is their similarities to people: “They’ve a humorousness,” he says. “They play video games and are intelligent. They outwit us and understand it. It’s very straightforward to anthropomorphize with these guys. As a result of as profoundly totally different from us as they’re, they’re additionally like us in a number of methods. And that self-recognition is each surprising and galvanizing.”
… Balcomb nonetheless laughs about how the whales at all times appeared to know, within the days earlier than digital pictures when he was gathering photo-identification info, when he had reached the top of his roll of movie. “That’s once they would at all times do the actually spectacular stuff, and also you’d by no means catch it on movie,” he says with a rueful smile.
He additionally turned unapologetically passionate in advocating for saving the Southern Residents from their looming extinction:
So far as Balcomb is worried, all the salmon-recovery plans on the desk fall woefully wanting the orcas’ wants, particularly if sport and industrial fishing within the Sound proceed at their present tempo. “There’s a number of discuss now about Puget Sound Chinook restoration—there’s a plan and the objective is for just a few hundred thousand fish. From a fisheries supervisor’s standpoint, if they will get a pair hundred thousand fish, they’d be completely satisfied as clams. However that gained’t maintain these whales. They’ll undergo that in a summer time.”
He typically butted heads with individuals who have been the targets of his withering criticism—notably the whale captivity and aquarium business, whose practices, he believed, weren’t solely inhumane and merciless but in addition harmful on a degree that the profiteers couldn’t comprehend. He was additionally incessantly vital of federal companies, notably these accountable for setting salmon-related insurance policies, particularly as these insurance policies more and more didn’t get well the endangered salmon runs that the whales rely on for his or her weight loss plan.
So Ken made a number of enemies over time, individuals who tended to sneer at him as “not an actual scientist” as a result of he operated exterior the normal scientific neighborhood and was clearly not reliant on company sponsorships. I keep in mind the then-director of the Vancouver Aquarium slagging Balcomb after I interviewed him in regards to the ethics of orca captivity (the aquarium had as soon as saved captive orcas and was considering retaining its choices open) as a self-important free cannon. “Cash and ego are the motivating elements,” he stated. “The activists shout cash, cash, cash at Wometco and the Miami Seaquarium [the owners of Tokitae/Lolita/Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut, the last surviving captive Southern Resident orca]. However Ken Balcomb’s entire dwelling is tied up in shaking these bushes and elevating cash to review this and research that.”
In actuality, whereas Balcomb was continually shaking bushes, he didn’t have to fabricate points to attract consideration to the Southern Residents’ very actual plight, or the truth that captivity in small concrete tanks is wildly inappropriate for animals like killer whales. He principally simply needed to get the eye of the folks accountable for making the selections round these points, and of the general public at massive.
When Balcomb started doing this work within the Nineteen Seventies, solely a handful of individuals have been even conscious of the survival challenges the Southern Residents confronted even then, and much more acutely now. His life’s work, and that of the quite a few colleagues and proteges he impressed and empowered, is mirrored within the highly effective ongoing work by a number of state and federal companies, in addition to environmental organizations and native whale lovers, to save lots of the SRKWs.
The superb orca database he created will at all times be his bodily legacy—one that ought to by no means be underestimated—and pioneering photograph identification as a scientific method will at all times be his scientific legacy. However the highly effective work of the folks he evokes even nonetheless will probably be a legacy higher than something ever created by his critics.
“His biggest legacy shouldn’t be serving to to preserve these whales or perceive them, it’s offering and galvanizing folks like me and the youthful generations to maintain this going. Conserving these whales and different pure ecosystems are long-term endeavors and we have to cross generations to do it,” Oregon State wildlife professor John Durban told the Seattle Times.
Whale scientist Deborah Giles of Wild Orca credited Balcomb with being her introduction to the Southern Residents, and credit him with inspiring a lot of the motion devoted to saving the inhabitants.
“Once I take into consideration him, tenacious involves thoughts,” Giles stated. “He’s simply anyone that by no means stopped preventing for the whales, by no means stopped making an attempt to make it possible for the whales’ plight was within the public’s eye and within the minds of the elected officers and our managers which might be chargeable for recovering these whales, and pushing for these whales to be protected and preventing for his or her restoration.”
