The Killer Whale Who Changed the World

Before the summer of '64 everyone knew whales were monsters. Most whale species were being hunted to the point of extinction. The whale the world knew best was Herman Melville's Moby Dick -- and the image of "the Great White Whale" was every bit as horrifying as the Great White Shark became in the 1970's courtesy of Jaws. The only good whale was a dead whale. The military used whales for target practice. Fishermen shot them from their boats. Both the US and Canasda had an active whaling industry. No one had any problems with this. In 1964, the curator of the Vancouver Aquarium decided to study the monster. Of course, there was only one way to learn about the fearsome creature. He had to kill it. So he put together his team-- a First Nations harpooner, a sculptor and a top neuroscientist. The plan was to set up camp on Saturna Island where the monsters lurked close to shore, harpoon a killer whale and drag the corpse back to the Vancouver Aquarium where the sculptor would use the remains to create a scale model for study. The neuroscientist would dissect the brain. Other scientists had dibs on the other organs. The whalers spotted their prey, harpooned it as planned -- but the creature didn't die. The harpoon missed the vital organs. Terrified that the monster was going to kill them, they shot at it with a rifle. When the whale still didn't attack they decided hey could take it back to Vancouver to study it. The harpooned whale followed their boat back to the city "like a dog on a leash." What happened next changed the world. The Killer Whale Who Changed The World explores the transformation of whales from "killers" to "Orcas."