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Orcas churn in the waters of Penn Cove during the capture of orca Lolita in 1970. Of the seven whales captured that day, only one – Lolita – is still alive. Wallie V. Funk / Pacific NW Studies Collection, WWU Orcas churn in the waters of Penn Cove during the capture of orca Lolita in 1970. Of the seven whales captured that day, only one – Lolita – is still alive. Wallie V. Funk / Pacific NW Studies Collection, WWU Workers using a bucket loader remove a dead orca whale from a beach in Penn Cove following the 1970 roundup. Several orcas that had been killed in the roundup were later found with their bellies slit and filled with rocks, chains and anchors to keep the deaths from public knowledge.

Save the date The Orca Network is organizing a commemorative event on Sunday, Aug. 8 in Penn Cove. At 3 p.m., boaters are invited to attend a wreath-laying ceremony at the site of the capture. From 5-6:30 p.m., a reception is planned at the Coupeville Wharf with former dolphin trainer Ric O’Barry and displays of the orca capture. At 6:30 p.m., a silent auction will be held to benefit the Orca Network. Dessert and coffee is followed by guest speakers including Ric O’Barry, Howard Garrett and eyewitnesses to the capture. Coupeville Performing Arts Center, 501 S. Main St. Visit orcanetwork.org.

Forty years later, the plaintive cries of young orca whales reverberating across Penn Cove is still vivid for John Stone of Coupeville.

“You could hear the whales squealing when they pulled them out,” Stone said. “It drove my cat crazy.”

Working a summer job at the Captain Whidbey Inn, Stone became an intimate witness to an infamous event: the 1970 capture of orca whales in Penn Cove by entrepreneurs engaged in the then-legal business of
selling the wild marine mammals to aquariums and theme parks.

Stone transported newspaperman Wally Funk out to the whale hunters’ raft to photograph the capture. His parents owned the inn and the site where the whales were trapped was just a third of a mile away.

“My gut reaction was this was the wrong thing to do,” he said. “I was not alone, but I was not in the majority. These were ‘killer whales.’”

On Aug. 8, 1970, Stone was scheduled to work the evening shift in the restaurant, but was off during the day. He remembers the noise, airplanes and high-speed boats that arrived in the cove, driving about
90 whales before them.

It was a superpod of the combined family groups or pods, named “J,” “K” and “L,” belonging to the Southern Resident orcas whose home range is the Salish Sea. The area encompasses Puget Sound and the Northwest
Straits in Northwest Washington and British Columbia’s Gulf Islands and
Georgia Strait.

The whale families, which normally are separate, congregated for genetic diversity in mating, Stone believes, when Seattle Marine Aquarium owner Ted Griffin and Don Goldsberry of SeaWorld, ensnared them
at the San de Fuca end of Penn Cove.

“The fact that the whales were here was a fluke,” said Stone.

The hunters had first tried to herd the superpod into Holmes Harbor, but they escaped, according to Stone, and headed up Possession Sound.

“They were able to corner them in Penn Cove,” said Stone. “They got a net around half the whales and a smaller net inside of it, trying to isolate the adolescents. They isolated whales and then hauled them out
at the old Standard Oil dock at San de Fuca.”

That’s when the new little captives issued their cries, heard all across Penn Cove, with answering calls from the adults. The roundup took place over about a week, Stone said. Of the approximately 90 whales,
seven young orcas were captured and one adult female died as the result
of net entanglement trying to reach her calf. According to written
accounts, four babies also drowned.

One of the bodies was netted by a fisherman in November 1970, while the others washed up on the beach. They were found to have had their bellies slit, then filled with rocks and weighted with chains and
anchors to keep the deaths from public knowledge.

The whale hunts continued until Washington’s Secretary of State, Ralph Munro, witnessed a 1976 whale roundup and was motivated to urge state legislation outlawing the capture of orcas.

It is estimated that the Southern Residents lost between a third and a half of their population during the years trapping was allowed.

Most of those were young whales whose reproductive years were ahead of them. Juvenile orcas were preferred by the hunters because they were smaller to transport and thought to be easier to train to do aquatic
tricks at the marine parks they were sold to.

Of the seven orcas captured that August week 40 years ago, only one, Lolita, whose native name was Tokitae, and who was six years old at the time, is still alive. She has been at Florida’s Seaquarium for 39 years.

Six historic hours

The most dramatic record of the orca capture is the photographic collection of Wallie Funk.

Funk was the owner of two Whidbey newspapers at the time and got around a lot for a local boy. He said he has photographed five U.S. presidents, the Beatles, Mick Jagger and numerous historic events. But
his work recording the chaos and action at the Penn Cove capture site is
among his most vivid memories.

Funk arrived in the afternoon of Aug. 8 at the Captain Whidbey, encountered Ted Griffin and Don Goldsberry, and told them he would really like to go out to the walkway raft next to the net pen and do
some photographing. They agreed and Stone took him out in a 12’ aluminum
boat with a 3 hp motor to the center of the operation.

“They were entrapped in a small area, they were flailing in the air,” Funk said. “You could hear a high-pitched squeal and they were communicating with many, many more that were outside the net in Penn
Cove.”

“I was the only press allowed on the raft. At the time I was there to record a scene. Every once in a while I would run out of film and one of the Stones would get more film for me. I was out there for about six
hours. I ran through 30 rolls of film,” Funk said.

It was only later as he developed the film that Funk stepped back from his role as a photojournalist to react with outrage at what he had recorded.

Killer whales

At the time, recalled Stone, the marine mammals were known as killer whales and thought to be extremely dangerous to humans, though there are no recorded instances of orcas in the wild attacking people.

While some pods hunt large prey such as seals and sharks, the Southern Residents are fish eaters. Some fishermen considered them pests and unwanted competition.

People quickly found out about the hunt and lined the road above the Penn Cove capture site, more out of curiosity than objection, said Stone.

Five years before, a male orca had been caught in a fisherman’s net in Namu, B.C. He was sold to Ted Griffin, who named him Namu, brought him in a floating pen to Seattle through Deception Pass and installed
him at his aquarium.

Namu and Griffin made headlines, but the orca – the second to live in captivity – died in 1966, a year after it was captured.

Free Lolita

Forty years later, attitudes have changed. Whales capture is not allowed in the United States and organizations have formed to free captive whales.

Lolita is the only captive whale alive from the 1970 Penn Cove trapping. Organizations such as the local Orca Network say that she has served humans long enough and should be repatriated from Miami’s
Seaquarium to her home waters. They add that the Deepwater Horizon oil
spill may pose a new threat to Lolita.

“The awful possibility that plumes of oil mixed with highly toxic chemical dispersants could reach Miami in mid-August, as predicted by NOAA, and be pumped into her tank water, adds urgency to our 15-year
long efforts to retire her in her native waters,” said a recent press
release from the Orca Network.

John Stone agrees that Lolita should be freed. He had his own close encounter with an orca during that week that still gives him pause.

The young man was going out to the raft at the net pen to pick up Funk and he saw the massive male orca known as J1 or Ruffles headed right toward his little skiff.

“This huge whale was coming to me on the surface on a collision course,” said Stone.

He was not sure what to do, but did not want to confuse the whale by changing his course. So Stone held steady.

“Just before he got to me, his huge dorsal fin goes right under me and came up just on the other side of the boat. My heart was in my throat,” said Stone.

The orcas were being terrorized and young ones trapped and though J1 might easily have attacked Stone, he did not.

Stone has not forgotten. He will pilot his 58’ ketch, the Cutty Sark, out on Sunday, Aug. 8 to the spot where the whales were captured 40 years ago for a commemoration of the capture.

The outing is being organized by the Orca Network – people intent on making sure the rest of us don’t forget either.