Saving Luna?

When journalists Mike Parfit and Suzanne Chisholm arrived at Nootka Sound, a remote inlet on the west coast of Vancouver, in March of 2004 to do a brief story on a lost baby whale named Luna, they didn’t realize he was going to change their lives.

Luna became separated from his pod in the summer of 2001 when he left his mother’s side to follow his uncle. Nobody knows what happened to the older whale, but without him to guide him back, Luna became lost. He was first sighted in Nootka Sound in July 2001.

The L-pod, as it was known, is an endangered group of whales. Their numbers are growing smaller. One of the most significant risks to this pod is that their primary food source, Chinook salmon, is being contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from agriculture, pulp mills, other industries, military bases and urban runoff, according to an article in the Vancouver Sun dated Nov. 26, 2008.

Boats from Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans were the first to approach Luna, also known as L-98, said Parfit. At first the little whale’s presence was kept quiet.

Soon the local Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation discovered him.

“Roger Dunlap, a fisheries biologist, and I met Tsu’xitt a few months after he came in. We were in awe, wondering why he was there,” said Jamie James, fisheries program manager for the Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation.

Over time, the friendly baby whale became a popular attraction, and people the world over came to see him and play with him.

But not everyone was glad he was there.

“Luna became identified as a problem because of interferences with sports fishing,” said Charles Menzies, associate professor of anthropology at the University of British Columbia.

Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) started getting complaints from commercial fishermen about Luna. He was damaging their boats and disrupting their business. Some outfitters made threats that Luna would be killed if the DFO did not keep him away from them.

The DFO instituted a stewardship program based on the “tough love” concept to discourage Luna from approaching people and boats. Stewards patrolled the waters, warning tourists and others not to interact with Luna, not to touch him, not even look him in the eye.

Violations of these rules could result in large fines. They hoped that if Luna’s efforts to bond with humans were thwarted, he would go and find his pod.

"If we didn’t pay attention to him he may have gone out and found his pod. He would have been lonely. He would have formed associations with seals or sea otters that would have been safer,” said Lance Barrett-Lennard, senior marine mammal scientist at the Vancouver Aquarium in British Columbia. “Hanging out with humans is like hanging out with Hell’s Angels. It’s just not a good idea."

“I think it’s the people who need to be managed,” said Toni Frohoff, a behavioral and wildlife biologist. Frohoff had been asked to help with Luna because of her extensive experience with solitary whales and dolphins. “There is a great potential for positive human-dolphin encounters and relationships such as that with Luna. Yet in every single case I’ve examined the problems have stemmed from the human side.”

DFO and many scientists believed that allowing Luna to connect with humans was not in his best interest.

“There is a sensitivity period for forming attachments. The farther he got out from that the less likely he was to be able to bond with whales. You don’t want to interfere with his ability to do that,” said Dan Estep, a certified applied animal behavior therapist in Colorado. “It’s normal to try to find relationships, but the behavior was directed at inappropriate individuals. Humans can’t be whales and can’t provide needs of whales

But it may have been too late. Unable to find his pod, Luna was already bonding to humans.

“Social animals have an innate biological need for social interaction. The need to bond socially is very strong,” said Temple Grandin, professor of animal science at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. Her books, Animals In Translation and Animals Make Us Human, are bestsellers.

Indeed, scientists recently discovered that whales, like humans and great apes, make powerful social bonds. Recent scientific evidence shows that like humans and great apes, whales have spindle cells in their brains.

“These (spindle cells) process positive emotions, usually social attachments,” said Marc Bekoff, an internationally respected ethologist and author of The Emotional Lives of Animals. “Anyone who has worked with whales intuitively knows they're extremely emotional.”

“The orca’s concept of family is incredibly unique. Pacific Northwest resident orcas stay with their mothers for life,” said Frohoff. “It was obvious he needed interaction. He needed it with other orcas. He sought it from people. He needed family. Many scientists didn’t hear that.”

“Luna was telling us behaviorally what he needed. He was seeking people out and chasing down boats and chasing down people,” said Bekoff. “He liked to be petted, sought people out, liked to have his tongue rubbed and his head petted. Luna was two when this started. He used vocalizations and behaviors. It blew my mind how expressive Luna was.”

“Luna’s emotional and psychological needs, especially as those of somewhat of a toddler, were not being met,” said Frohoff.

The more effort that was made to deny Luna the social contact he needed, the harder he tried to reconnect.

“He’s very creative in what he’s doing, he tries a lot of things,” one visitor told Parfit.

“Luna was a very appealing little animal,” said Barrett-Lennard. “It was an experience of a lifetime to hang out with a little whale who wants to be your buddy. It was hard to keep my hands off him. It was hard not to interact with Luna.”

“His (was an) apparent determination to have a social life with humans,” said Parfit. “It’s striking to see an animal coming to humans not for food but for friendship, something we find critical, vital and reassuring. Some of these things we think of as human are shared across the animal kingdom.”

The stewardship program was ultimately ineffective in preventing interaction with Luna. The unintentional result was that Luna was treated with considerable inconsistency.

Many people who cared about Luna stayed away from him for his own sake, while some broke the law and played with him.

“In some ways he got what he needed by people breaking the law,” said Bekoff. “A woman who was going to be fined $100,000 and ten years in jail wound up having to pay a hundred bucks (for petting him).”

“The people who didn’t want him, mostly recreational fishermen, became the ones he came to and they threatened to kill him,” said Parfit. “This whale was marching toward tragedy.”

Although our inconsistent behavior may have confused, frustrated, and perhaps even frightened him, Luna kept coming back because humans were all he had.

The “tough love” concept may also have backfired and increased his need for human contact.

“I'm not sure that you can apply that concept to animals,” said Susan Hykes, a Colorado-based psychotherapist who works with tough love techniques. Tough love is a behavior modification process typically used with teenagers who have not learned limits but who can understand the consequences of their behavior and make reasonable, rational choices to act differently, she said.

But Luna was an infant acting in response to a primal biological need to bond to others. That this child of another species would have rationally considered his options and decided to go off and try to find his pod may not have been a realistic expectation on anyone’s part.

“Behavior modification isn’t about modifying instinct, it’s about modifying learned behavior.  You’re doing apples and oranges.  That’s why I believe it won’t work,” said Hykes.

An experiment done on a group of isolated puppies in the 1950s may shed some light on Luna’s predicament.

“The puppies were kept isolated, then punished if they came to humans for contact,” said Dan Estep, a certified applied animal behavior therapist in Colorado.

“It backfired. It made them more motivated to connect. Nobody knows why.”

Although the DFO may not have realized it, or disregarded it if they did, withholding attention from a young animal acting on a normal, primal need to bond to others is punitive. Inconsistency, too, can cause distress.

“Punishment of any type tends to produce anxiety,” said Estep. “That’s a normal sort of reaction. If you start punishing an animal for being close to others, it produces anxiety.”

“Being totally alone is often worse than nasty interaction. The dog experiment proved this. The way Luna was handled was wrong and cruel,” said Grandin.

Like the puppies, Luna redoubled his efforts to make contact.

“He got more aggressively friendly with people. The government realized he could kill or injure someone or get himself killed,” said Parfit.

“The problems with the boaters escalated,” said Jamie James, fisheries program manager for the Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation. “The pods were listed as Species At Risk so DFO got involved. They were trying to conserve the L- pod to ensure their survival. So they decided to have Tsu’xitt (Luna) relocated. When they first discovered Luna in Nootka Sound the DFO didn’t think he needed their help to reunite with his pod.

“The first year they saw him was 2001. In January 2002 when word was beginning to leak out about him Springer showed up. They were all distracted by Springer that year,” said Barrett-Lennard.

Springer was a young orphaned orca who had become isolated from her pod.

“With Springer something had to be done. She was in danger of death in Seattle and it was in front of national television. Luna was in good condition. He was in an inlet with a lot of fish and where there were few boats in winter.”

“They felt he was within normal range of his pod and if he survived they would pick him up,” said Parfit. “The government of Canada doesn’t have a mandate or the funding to rescue a healthy animal. That’s kind of an extraordinary thing when you think about it. It’s like saying if a bird falls out of a tree you have to put it back.”

Relocating Luna would have been very expensive, and there was no guarantee his pod would accept him back.

“To pick him up and move him would have cost between $400,000 and $500,000. It’s a lot of money,” said Parfit.

But there were other options. Ken Balcomb, executive director of the Center for Whale Research, offered to lead Luna back to his pod with his own boat in the spring of 2003. This would have cost the government nothing.

“It was the most simple answer. It likely would have worked,” said Frohoff. “It was turned down.”

“They (DFO) didn’t do it because it was an interactive activity,” said Parfit. “They would have had to allow Ken to play with him, and they didn’t want him to do that. They felt humans caused Luna’s interactions and if he could be prevented (from interacting) he’d remain a real whale and a wild whale.”

“If he were in a more populated area like Springer was, Luna would not have been left to languish away,” said Frohoff.

“The government considered sending him to Victoria where his pod spent the summer, but their concern was there were more boats there,” said Barrett-Lennard. “If his pod didn’t take him, and he was too friendly with people… it was safer to leave him where he was.”

Frohoff disagreed. “He wasn’t habituated that much to people then.”

Scientists also disagreed on whether Luna ‘s pod would accept him back.

“A lot of time went by before they tried to relocate him. Luna was separated from his group for so long, and during the critical learning period. He would have happily joined any pod. There’s a good chance his pod would not have accepted him back. In killer whales, a lot of behavior is influenced by learning. They learn the social conventions and rules that govern interaction. He would’ve come back as a rambunctious whale, not knowing rules, such as who you play with, or who you share food with. They may or may not have recognized him. He may have seemed like a heathen who gets in your face.”

“Luna might have integrated. He really deserved more help than he received,” said Frohoff. “Springer was integrated with the help of her family members. Many scientists were too quick to say it wouldn’t work, but Springer is doing wonderfully years later.”

Barrett-Lennard was skeptical because Springer’s reunion with her pod nearly failed.

“Springer was separated for a shorter period of time and had a very difficult time. The first week or so they rejected her,” he said. “She had a lot of scrapes and scars. She followed about a mile behind them, then left and played with boats. She was adopted by an adult female who had no calf of her own, that’s how she got back into the pod. I don’t think Luna would have gotten an advocate. He was too big, strong and rambunctious. He wasn’t a cute baby anymore. I think he would have had a tough time.”

DFO officials decided to take the chance and make the effort to save Luna before he was killed or accidentally killed someone while playfully trying to get attention. Plans were made to return him to his pod.

But the Mowachaht-Muchalaht First Nation opposed them.

They didn’t see Luna the way others did, and they didn’t trust the DFO.

Their chiefs told DFO they believed there was a spiritual connection between Luna and their dead chief, Ambrose Maquinna, said James.

“Before our late chief passed away he had a meeting with the council of chiefs. He was in a hospital close to the ocean. He saw killer whales. He said he wanted to come back as one,” said James. “Tsu’xitt showed up four days later. Many people believe Tsu’xitt embodied the spirit of the whale. It’s a First Nation perspective.”

To the First Nation, Luna was “not actually an animal, he just looked like one,” said Menzies. “They saw Luna as a reincarnation of a recently departed hereditary chief.”

The notion of reincarnation among First Nation tribes is called balxs.

“Typically people come back as other people,” he said. “They may return as an animal – an animal embodiment of the deceased person that looks like an animal but it is not. What from the material biological perspective is a killer whale could be noxnax or the reincarnated essence of a recently passed away leader.

“Noxnax are special types of beings, some whale-like in appearance. They are tied to particular locations. Some take the shape of large whales. ‘Supernatural’ or ‘spiritual’ are not the right words to describe them. They’re on the edge of the real.”

“The reincarnation idea developed over time so he was their property,” ” said Barrett-Lennard. “The DFO tried to convince them it was in Luna’s best interest to move him. They said, ‘We’re not interested in what you tell us about his best interest.’ If he’d been moved quickly (before the reincarnation idea about Luna developed), it wouldn’t of happened.”

The relationship between the Mowachaht-Muchalaht First Nation and DFO was scarred by years of mistrust.

The DFO was accused of being “a patsy to First Nation claims,” said Menzies. “The DFO doesn’t, in reality, act in the interest of the First Nation. There is a history of DFO harassing them, taking them to court over things.” There was long-standing conflict and frequent clashing between DFO and the First Nation.

“They distrusted DFO because DFO was allowing controversial fishing farms into their territory,” said Barrett-Lennard.

The First Nation’s concerns about Luna’s fate mixed with their feelings toward DFO. This agency represented the political forces that were destroying their cultural heritage, which bonded them together and provided a sense of group identity.

“In my personal opinion we weren’t as connected as when Tsu’xitt showed up,” said James. “The First Nation is losing its cultural significance, we’re losing our cultural perspective, our language… Tsu’xitt helped lift us up again. We didn’t know about our own spirituality. When Tsu’xitt showed up we believed him to be an embodied spirit. We’re uplifted again. Our cultural significance is still there. Tsu’xitt showed us that.”

“The whale’s coming was very important to them. It was a galvanizing moment for the community to celebrate what it is to be an indigenous people in the community. The whale validated (their) traditional practices. That would make perfect sense. Communities seek to take control, reassert, reclaim one’s culture,” said Menzies. “Colonialism attacks, demeans one’s culture, one’s sense of self and identity.”

Much about the plans to relocate Luna were kept from the First Nation and other concerned groups. There was talk that he was going to be taken to an aquarium. Many opposed that.

“People in the orca world have said they’d rather Luna be dead than be in a tank,” said Parfit. “It’s hard for orcas, particularly male orcas, to survive in an aquarium. It’s a harsh way to try to keep him alive. It’s a very small space. They are much more susceptible to disease and bat themselves against the walls.”

But Barrett-Lennard and staff from the Vancouver Aquarium were not in Nootka Bay to help DFO get Luna to the aquarium. “We agreed to help move Luna because we had the expertise to do it and DFO didn’t, and our mission statement obliges us to take an active role in conservation oriented actions such as this.

"We were assisting with the plan to test and relocate him,” said Barrett-Lennard. “They (DFO) were concerned he may have a communicable disease. That may be why he got separated from his pod. The plan was to catch him and test him for a communicable disease. If he didn’t have it then he would be put in a truck and moved to Victoria and released near his pod.”

“They were going to pick him up and throw him in a truck. We thought that was disrespectful,” said James. “He showed up on his own. They had no right to move him. We believed he had a right to be there if he chose to be.”

“The Crown has an obligation to consult with the First Nation, which has unextinguished rights and title,” said Menzies.

The First Nation had the authority to stand up to DFO and assert their cultural beliefs through their tribal rights. And this time, the whole world was watching.

DFO wanted to capture Luna by luring him into a net, but the First Nation intervened. They sailed out in their boats and lured Luna away by singing and banging their paddles. Luna turned away from the net and followed them.

“We led Tsu’xitt away. We sang our hearts out. Tsu’xitt chose us over DFO,” said James. “DFO wanted to get him. Tsu’xitt decided to be with us. That showed us the strength of our cultural significance. We believed him to be the embodied spirit. We sang out there. It proves to us we still have our culture.”

But not everyone agrees that was what Luna’s action proved.

“By that time Luna had lots of (experience with) boats and people slapping the water with paddles,” said Barrett-Lennard. “He knew that was a place to go get attention. He had a situation where everyone was interested in him. It was like a carnival. Luna was just having a field day.”

Frohoff brought another perspective to light.

“Orcas are very acoustic, extraordinarily acoustic,” she said. “Their acoustics are far superior to anything we can reserve or produce. Singing could have provided a wonderful acoustic stimulus for a whale living in an acoustically deprived environment. Orcas are vocal to each other. It makes sense to me he would be attracted to that. It was really unique and interesting what the First Nation people were offering.”

“DFO lost control,” said Menzies. “The individuals who were doing the jobs were highly qualified people who were asked to do more than what they were there to do. The management of a whale is not what they do. (DFO was faced with the need to) solve a problem for sports fisheries versus a transformative event – a whale comes to the First Nation. They didn’t have the capacity to connect the two things.” Their lack of capacity resulted in “potential institutional incompetence. ”

“Afterward DFO didn’t do a lot,” said Frohoff.

Thus, Luna remained in Nootka Bay. Sports fishermen continued to threaten his life, and, like a child allowed to play in traffic, he was at constant risk of injury or death from boats. The stewardship program was terminated.

Parfit and Chisholm decided to intervene.

“It appeared things were going very badly for him, getting worse and it appeared it would lead to his death. We saw a solution and were able to make it happen,” said Parfit.

But in order to help Luna, he was forced to re-evaluate his role as a journalist.

“As a journalist, I find it absolute fiction to think journalists can not care about things they are writing about. We became very fond of Luna right away; we learned to care about Luna as soon as we saw him. Our hearts were engaged by Luna.

“We started arguing to the DFO and the press that the picture should change. A project of intentional interaction should take place. We would do it, we were there, we would manage the project. We were paid to stay there and work on a book (about Luna).”

Parfit and Chisholm applied for a permit for a different kind of stewardship program for Luna, one where he would not be punished for trying to get his needs met.

So did Frohoff and other concerned scientists.

“The DFO did less and less and Luna was just sitting there,” said Frohoff. “Something had to be done. I was just concerned about Luna’s welfare. I submitted a proposal with other scientists for a stewardship program and Suzanne and Mike submitted one too. Ours was not for hands on interaction but for some form of enrichment. Our plans, in their differences, complemented each other.”

But none of them got a response from the DFO.

“We started to take action - civil disobedience to keep him safe,” said Parfit. “We made proposals to try to do official interaction with him in the summer of 2005, about six months before he died. We mostly watched him from a distance for several months. Then we got more actively engaged in leading him away from problem situations and let the boat drift, let him come up and play if he wished, looked at him and talked to him. We didn’t touch him much,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what was right. I knew what wasn’t working. I couldn’t talk about it. I wanted to but it would be asking scientists how to break the law. I should have led him out to open water every day and maybe he would have gotten reconnected with his pod.”

Grandin also shared some of her impressions on how Luna could have been helped. She suggested ignoring his attempts to interact with people for a short time to see if it would result in his returning to his pod, and helping him do that by using a boat to lure him back to them.

“If this fails to work in a short period of time, he would have better welfare if he becomes a tame “tourist visiting” whale who could interact with people and still swim free in the sea,” she said. “Maybe Luna could learn to live in two social worlds - the whale world and the human world.  When his pods returns to the area, people would still interact kindly with him, but attempts would still be made to lead him close to his pod with boats.  People should never be taken away from him, but he may also learn to spend some time with his own kind.”

DFO remained silent.

Then, one day, Fate intervened, and the inevitable happened.

Few things are more frightening or dangerous than the fury of a storm at sea. Vicious storms churning across the Pacific toward Canada have increased over the years as a result of soot from factories in Asia and India, according to an article dated March 6, 2007 in the Vancouver Sun.

One such storm mercilessly buffeted a 104–foot long, 1,700 horsepower tugboat near British Columbia in mid-March of 2006. The tugboat’s crew was struggling to tow a barge. The captain ordered them to pull the tugboat into Nootka Sound for refuge in its sheltered waters.

Luna saw the tugboat come in. He remembered its friendly crew and swam toward it. But the last time Luna played with this boat it wasn’t towing a barge. It didn’t have a shroud around its propeller, said Parfit. “There was a big cable between it and the barge. The tug was going back and forth to stay in one place in the bay.”

Luna dived under the boat, as he often did before playfully sprinting to the surface.

“A guy slammed it into reverse real hard because of a problem he was having with the boat,” said Parfit. “Luna was sucked in. There was no way out. He was cut into pieces.”

Luna’s tragic death was reported around the world. His many friends mourned his loss and filled the Internet with tributes to his life.

“From what I observed the government was willing to wait until something bad happened which would either kill Luna or force their hand. It was amoral. They were so passive – they were waiting for harm to Luna or possible harm to human beings. Others suggested intentional interaction. They refused to allow it even though it cost them nothing,” said Parfit. “The outcome was definitely amoral and that was appalling.”

Marilyn Joyce, the DFO official in charge of Luna’s relocation, declined comment.

“She feels terrible about what happened. She doesn’t want to talk about it anymore,” said Lara Sloan, DFO spokesperson.

Requests for an interview with someone else from DFO who had been involved with Luna received no response.

To the First Nation, Luna’s death was a natural event. “Let nature take its course,” said James. “Many killer whales die around the world. Life continues. It’s another story in our First Nation history that can be shared years and years down the road.”

But whether Luna’s death could be considered a natural event under the circumstances is questionable.

“I am a ‘let nature take its course’ type,” said Holmes Rolston III, a distinguished professor of philosophy at Colorado State University in Fort Collins who was dubbed the “father of environmental ethics” by his peers. “If the disoriented orca was being disoriented by any human cause, I might have sought to rescue it and return it to its pod. If I thought this was a natural event, I would have left it alone. Maybe the argument here was that leaving it alone was not an option, if it was in a high-traffic area and likely to be killed by passing boats, as seemed to have happened.”

No one knows whether Luna becoming lost had anything to do with humans, or whether the adult whale he followed away from his pod that day was unable to reunite with him and lead him back for any reason related to humans.

But when he appeared in waters where human traffic made him a danger to himself and others, humans certainly played a huge role in his life – and death.

“When we influence the lives of animals we have a duty to take care of them,” said Bekoff. “There are really serious ethical questions here.”

Frohoff agrees.

“‘Let nature take its course’… as if we are not a part of nature and a part of the problem - that’s the most frustrating thing I’ve heard lately,” she said. “We need to accept responsibility for being part of the solution.”

“We learned the incredibly important influence of social interaction. We have to act quickly if it happens again,” said Barrett-Lennard. “We don’ t have time. We’ve got to get (the whale) back to its group.”

Parfit and Chisholm decided to make a film to celebrate Luna’s life.

“We want people to remember Luna,” said Parfit.

The film, Saving Luna, has won 22 awards around the world to date. It will be released in U.S. theaters later this year, and will be out on DVD soon afterward.

On Nov. 26, 2008, the Vancouver Sun reported the deaths of Luna’s mother, Splash, and his six-year-old brother, Aurora. The two whales were among seven southern resident whales who died from eating Chinook salmon contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The contamination of salmon in their feeding area is more severe than salmon in the northern waters. Agriculture, pulp mills, other industries, military bases and urban runoff are polluting the waters, according to a Jan. 20, 2009 report in The Environmental Health News.

If Luna had been returned to his pod, or had never been lost, perhaps he would also have died from eating contaminated salmon.

Perhaps Luna was destined to an early death either way. But because he became lost and found himself among humans, he taught us some important lessons.

“This need for social connections can actually extend between species. That’s an astonishing thing. That’s what he brought to us,” said Parfit. “A lot of evidence indicates these instincts and needs are much more widespread than we think, and if they are, we need to take them into consideration in our relationships with other animals, about who we are and who they are and all the mysteries and beauty of that relationship.”