The Power of One – A new orca calf and the passing of a whale hero

The US media reported last week that a very young orca calf, a Bigg's killer whale, had been spotted swimming alongside its mother in Puget Sound on America’s east coast.

You’d be right in thinking we’d struggle to write a whole blog about this alone, but it’s a story where if fate had not intervened nearly half a century ago, things could have turned out very differently. And fate came in the shape of a whale hero.

Ralph Munro, a former Washington Secretary of State and an assistant to then-Governor Dan Evans, began a lifelong love of orcas when he was four or five years old in the 1940s, living with his family in a cottage on the southwest shore of Bainbridge Island on the east coast. He remembers one night when he could hear a group of orcas in the bay outside his window. He described the experience in a 2004 interview with the Bainbridge Island Review saying : “They were sleeping, but I wasn’t. I was just—for hours—lying in my bed listening to them breathe...”

On a spring day in 1976, Munro and his wife were sailing in a small yacht in Budd Inlet when orcas suddenly began to surge past, pursued by power boats and aircraft commissioned by SeaWorld. Munro looked on in horror as explosives were dropped to herd the orcas into a net, separating mother orcas from their calves. “It was gruesome,” he recalled. “And they were going to take that whale out of Puget Sound and put it in a swimming pool somewhere. I had the feeling enough was enough.”

Munro swung into immediate action, working with the District Attorney to file a lawsuit against SeaWorld, which ultimately led to the release of the orcas several weeks later.

Largely due to this legal action, the capture was the last in a series that had taken place during the 1970s, where an estimated 100 killer whales were taken from the Pacific. This pod were the very last orcas to be captured in US waters. One individual amongst them was a female orca named Wake, who is believed to have gone on to have eight calves of her own, 16 grand-calves, and six great grand-calves, one of which is the orca calf spotted in Puget Sound last week.

The Pacific Whale Watch Association (PWWA) said in a statement “Without the direct efforts of Ralph Munro, at least 30 Bigg’s killer whales would have never been born. Munro went on to serve five terms as Washington’s Secretary of State,” the PWWA explained. “His passing at the age of 81 was announced last Thursday, the same day the new orca calf was spotted. Today, Bigg’s killer whales are thriving in Salish Sea waters.”

Munro is an inspiring example of the power of one, and of what can be achieved by determination and belief. As one of his political contemporaries, John F Kennedy, once said; “Anyone can make a difference. And everyone should try.”