Orca Rescue!: The True Story of an Orphaned Orca Named Springer
Foreword Phwoosh A male orca surfaced near me in Blackfish Sound where I was seeing orcas in the wild for the first time It was 1985 and I had come to British Columbia to learn about them The huge male came up so close I could smell his fishy breath His tall dorsal fin glistened in the sun That said the researcher standing beside me is as good as it gets I grew up in California near the beach and loved seeing whales and dolphins Sometimes we saw gray whales spouting close to shore But my interest in orcas began when I moved to Seattle and started dreaming about them In the first dream I was looking at a map of the Strait of Juan de Fuca Suddenly 80 dorsal fins burst through the map and the water became real I was hovering overhead looking down on a large group of killer whales headed east I woke with a start Who were these whales and what were they doing in my dreams I started reading everything I could I learned that orcas live in close families called pods and stay with their mothers their entire lives That they are not whales but the largest member of the dolphin family playful curious and intelligent And though they are the top predator in the sea they can be as gentle as they are fierce The more I learned the more I wanted to know
Soon I was spending every vacation traveling to see whales In 1992 I went to Hawaii for a conference about whales and dolphins Researcher Paul Spong gave a presentation about orcas I knew people in Seattle would love it so I asked Paul if he would give the talk there He said yes When I got home I had to learn how to put on a public event something I'd never done before My friends and I formed a group called Orca Alliance We rented a hall and made posters Near where I live there is an outdoor pool with a pool house During winter when the pool was closed someone had taped photos of orcas to the pool house windows I slipped a poster under the door hoping whoever took the pictures would find it The night of the presentation I met Mark Sears the pool caretaker He grew up on Puget Sound watching orcas and became a part time whale researcher When whales are near he takes photos to identify them and records their behaviors We have been friends ever since In 1993 I started working at a software company an exciting place where I learned how to manage projects and teams And through it all I wrote poems and stories and journals where I kept track of my orca dreams The strands of my life came together in 2002 when a young orca was discovered alone near the north end of Vashon Island This is the true story of what happened next
