An Encounter with Luna - British Columbia

An Encounter with Luna


Vancouver Island is huge and very convoluted round the edges. There are only a few places where the rocky terrain allows easy access to the water, with a road to take you there. So we drove for several hours on a wide dirt track, through the endless forests of Douglas fir, to get to Nootka Sound. We’d picked it out on the map, because it looked remote enough that we would be able to get away on our own.
We drew up finally at a small wooden pier, a very small beach and several small houses. One of them was a store, selling mostly fishing equipment and cans of food. Several cars were parked around the area, and a couple of guys were getting ready to take off in a motorboat, their fishing rods sticking out over the stern.
Unloaded the kayaks by the beach, we sorted what we would need for the night: sleeping bags, warm clothes, cooking equipment, some dried and canned food. I had a sit-on-top, a kayak that is very stable but does not keep you dry, so I donned some waterproof clothes, and stashed my luggage in big plastic bags. Jo had rented an ocean kayak, the kind you sit inside, with a skirt that prevents the water coming into the vessel. The first time she’d got into it, she promptly tipped over sideways, but by this time she was used to distributing her weight with care. If either of us capsized, our luggage would get soaked, but the sea is generally very calm around there, because there are countless wandering inlets dotted with islands, intercepting the Pacific Ocean’s waves and swells. It was a sunny day – with any luck the weather would hold out for us.
We were ready to leave, when an older man with white hair and a slight limp wandered down the path. I saw him coming and thought, he’s got something to tell us. He addressed me with a bemused smile, “You going out into the bay to see the orca?”
I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “I’d love to see an orca, I didn’t know there was one out there. I thought they went around in pods, and stuck to very specific routes.”
“This one’s lost his pod. We just got back from petting him, he’s right out there.” He waved at the bay. “His pod’s gone back to the ocean and they left him here. He’s real friendly!” His tone held a sense of wonder.
“Well, maybe we’ll see her!” We smiled at each other and he departed. Meanwhile Jo had been reading a notice board on the edge of the pier. When she came back, I said, “That guy just told me there is a lone orca out in the bay.”
She nodded. “Yes, there’s a sign about her on that board. Apparently she’s a teenaged female, and they’re hoping the pod will pick her up again when it comes back through the sound. They say you are not to feed her or approach her, they don‘t want her to get used to being with humans.”
“Hmmm!” I grinned. “Well, it would be a treat to see her, anyway. That guy told me he’d been petting her. It was obviously a pretty big experience for him, he’ll be telling his grandkids about it for years to come.”
“Cool! I hope we get to see her. Maybe she will approach us, then we won’t be approaching her!”
We put the kayaks in the water and set off paddling. I always appreciate that feeling of space you get out on the water, it’s such a different perspective from the land. The view was the same – forest covered hills on all sides with stretches of water in between, but somehow the sensation of the water carrying us, and the experience of looking back at land instead of looking out from land gave me a sense of freedom.
A breeze made the clear cold water slightly choppy, but not uncomfortable. We paddled for a couple of hours before we picked out a small uninhabited island with a short stretch of rocky shore where we could beach our kayaks. Once back on land, we went exploring. As I jumped from rock to rock along the edge of the water, I noticed large colonies of some kind of shellfish attached to the rock surface in the intertidal zone. They were shapeless and stone colored, very firmly attached to the rock. I called Jo over to see if she could identify them, and she said immediately, with a smile, “Those are oysters! Do you like oysters?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never had them. How do you get them off the rock?”
She showed me how to prize them off with a knife. We made a fire on the beach with some of the copious downed wood from the forest, to roast them on the coals. As soon as they were hot they automatically opened up so that you could scoop out the jelly like meat. They were an oddly liquid consistency but quite pleasant.
As darkness fell, Jo made a bed for herself in the sand and I lay down on the moss on the forest floor. Although there were a few mosquitoes, I slept well. In the morning we had a quick breakfast of bread and cheese before we set off again just as the sun was peeking through the clouds. We explored the coasts of a few other islands, and paddled along the edge of one shallow sandy beach. “Have you ever collected clams?” Jo asked, looking over the edge of her boat into the water.
“No, have you?”
“Yes, and there seem to be lots of them here. It must be a very low tide, I can see them sticking out of the sand.”
Floating behind her, I could see what she was looking at: there were scores of fat white and brown clam shells, just their tips visible. They were easy to scoop up with our hands, without even getting out of the kayaks. “Do we know for sure they are safe to eat?” I asked.
“Well,” Jo frowned, “I think that in places where there are a lot of people living on the shore, they might be polluted. Here it should be quite safe. Unless there’s a red tide. But I think we would see it if there was a red tide.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s kind of bacteria that stains the water red, and when you get a lot of them they make the shellfish poisonous.”
“Oh!”
She laughed. “Don’t worry about it, I think we would already be sick from eating the oysters if it was going to be a problem!”
“Well, I suppose that’s good, I’m glad you didn’t tell me earlier!”
After filling a couple of bags with clams, we set off again. Because it was Sunday, there were quite a few motorboats in the bay, but it was a large enough area that we weren’t too bothered by the swells or the sounds of engines. Both of us were keeping an eye open for the orca we were meant to avoid, when we noticed a couple of boats stopped in the middle of the bay, a long way from any land. As we paddled towards them to see what was going on, one of them sped away. The other remained, and when we were close enough to be in hearing range we could see the big black and white shape just beneath the water right beside the boat. She was rubbing her big body against the side of the boat, rolling over on her back and standing up on her tail. As we paddled closer, I called over, “I hope you’re not feeding her!”
“Oh no, he just likes the company,” a man in a peaked cap called back. “And we can’t start up our motor to leave because he might be damaged by the propeller. Bang on the side of your kayak, and he’ll come right over to you!”
Without stopping to consider the wisdom of this, I slapped the side of my kayak, and in a couple of seconds, a huge rounded back broke the surface right beside me. She was longer than my kayak. She lay there looking at me with one round black eye.
Hesitantly I reached out to rub her jet-black head. Was this OK? She seemed to like it, and I was delighted to feel her silky smooth skin, thick and almost rubbery. Rolling over on her back, she showed me her white belly, opening her mouth wide. I felt like I could be swallowed whole. It was cavernous, at least two feet across, with a short pink tongue and very neat lines of perfect pyramid teeth, an inch long in the center, getting smaller to either side. “Girl, look at your teeth!” I said, awed. I got the impression she was grinning at me.
Jo called, “I saw a program on TV about them, and it said they like to have their tongues rubbed!”
“I don’t think I want to risk losing my hand, even though you are so friendly,” I told the huge animal. I realized my kayak was moving sideways quite fast — she was leaning on it. As I was wondering if this was cause for concern, she swam underneath me, and I found myself and my boat lifted half out of the water on her huge broad back.
“Hey, baby, you’re gorgeous, but put me down!” I exclaimed in alarm.
“They’ve never been known to attack humans,“ called Jo reassuringly.
“That may be so, but I’d prefer not to be in the water with her!“
Just as the kayak was starting to slide sideways, she dove downwards, dropping me back in the water, and re-surfaced next to Jo, repeating her antics. For a few minutes she swam to and fro playing with each of us in turn. We had plenty of time to examine her: the round dimple on top her head which was her blowhole, the wide black tail that could probably knock our kayaks out of the water, the discolored indentations on her back where she had been hit by something - propellers? Clearly she was enjoying our interest in her. But she was getting more and more bumptious, picking us up and rubbing against us. In spite of her apparently playful intentions, she would capsize one or both of us sooner or later. How were we going to get away from her?
The first motorboat had quickly departed as soon as she’d left them, but now another one stopped nearby. I called over to tell them to slap the side of their boat, and again, she responded to the call immediately. She was obviously lonely, and people were probably the only beings in the bay who were prepared to hang out with her. Fish and seals were potential prey who would make themselves as scarce as they could when she was around.
The moment she left us, we took off towards the nearest shore, paddling as fast as we could. She caught up with us after we had gone a few hundred yards, and swam alongside, leaping in and out of the water in perfect sine waves, with such joyful carefree elegance and effortless ease that I felt quite jealous. When we got closer to the shore, she departed to show off to some other tourists.
In spite of the danger of having a large animal being so friendly, Jo and I were grinning from ear to ear for hours afterwards. There was something very special about being so close to such a delightful character, in such a very different physical form. I understood the bemused expression of the man who had approached me before we set off. It was the kind of encounter you never forgot.
This orca, nicknamed Luna, became very well known in Nootka Sound over the next year or so. “She” turned out to be wrongly labelled female, though the name stuck. His complete lack of fear around humans caused various problems, since he quite often disabled boats, and nearly sank a couple. Of course this ignited a fierce debate over what should be done about him. Finally, the problem was solved when he was killed by the propeller of a big boat. Many mourned and some were relieved, but no one who had been in contact with him was left unmoved.