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Paul Spong OBC is a Canadian neuroscientist and cetologist from originally from New Zealand. He has been researching orcas (or killer whales) in British Columbia since 1967, and is credited with increasing public awareness of whaling, through his involvement with Greenpeace.
Spong was born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1939. He spent his early life in Whakatāne on the northeast coast of New Zealand. He studied law and psychology at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. In 1963, Spong became a graduate student in Donald Lindsley's Lab in the Psychology Department at UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles]. He also worked in Ross Adey's Space Biology Lab in UCLA's Brain Research Institute (BRI). His work included computer analyses of human brain wave patterns and tracking information pathways. Spong's doctoral thesis was on sensory stimulation, perception, and human consciousness.
In 1967, Murray Newman of the Vancouver Aquarium, asked Patrick McGeer, head of the Neurological Lab at the University of British Columbia (UBC), to find a "whale scientist" to assist him at the aquarium. Spong was selected as the candidate to work at the Vancouver Aquarium with orca whales (Orcinus orca) after a successful interview and a recommendation from the head of the lab at UCLA.
Spong arrived in Vancouver with his wife Linda, in April 1967. This was a few months after Skana, the orca that Paul would be working with, had been bought by the Vancouver Aquarium from the Pacific Northwest Boat Show.
Spong started his research by testing the vision of a dolphin named Diana. He determined that she could see underwater about as well as a cat can see in air. Good but not great vision. He then started testing Skana's eyesight, rewarding her with half a herring every time she correctly distinguished between one and two vertical lines displayed on cards dropped into slots on an apparatus. Skana's task was to press a lever beside the card with two lines. The gap between the lines was varied to determine when Skana could no longer discriminate it. She took many hundreds of trials to learn the initial discrimination and became a willing performer. Then, at a point when Skana was performing at 100% correct, she suddenly switched her behaviour and started pressing only the "wrong" lever. Her performance fell to 0% and stayed there for many days. After some thought, and finding no comparable report in behavioural literature, Spong concluded that he whale was giving wrong answers on purpose and trying to communicate something to him. It was one word: NO! This was the first breakthrough Paul had in understanding orcas.
In April 1968, a second orca, Hyak was captured and brought to the Aquarium. Hyak was kept in a separate pool from Skana. After many months in isolation, Hyak had become sedentary, floating in one corner of his pool day and night. Spong decided to run an experiment to find out if an acoustic reward could be used to modify Hyak's behaviour. [1] He placed an underwater speaker in one corner of the pool and connected it to audio equipment in his lab next door. A 3 kHz tone started a trial. If Hyak moved out of his corner, Spong turned on a reward sound. Soon, Hyak was swimming sedately around the pool. Spong then modified the reward criteria, essentially saying that anything except staying on one corner of the pool would be rewarded with sound. Soon, Hyak was an enthusiastic performer. Spong learned the importance of acoustics for orcas through these experiments. His experiments with music and sound helped Hyak’s recovery from lethargy. When the Hyak and Skana were placed in the same pool, he observed that they vocalised together.
Among Spong’s frequent interactions with the whales was an event involving Skana. Spong had developed a habit of going to the Aquarium in the early morning, before the public arrived and sitting on a little training platform dangling his bare feet in the water. Skana would come over to him and Spong would rub his feet over Skana’s head and body. She seemed to enjoy that. One morning, Skana swam slowly towards him as usual; then when just a couple of inches away from Spong's feet suddenly opened her jaws and slashed them across Spong's feet, so close he could feel her teeth on the tops and bottoms of his feet. Naturally, Spong jerked his feet out of the water and sat trembling on the platform. After quite some time he calmed down enough to put his feet back into the water. Skana did it again and Spong reacted the same way. By now Spong was curious. What was Skana doing? They went through this circle 10 or 11 times, until finally Spong was able to leave his feet in the water while Skana slashed her teeth across them without reacting. And then, Skana stopped. In that moment, Spong realised with sudden insight that he was no longer afraid of Skana . She had quickly and efficiently de-conditioned Spong's fear of her immensely powerful jaws and teeth. Not only that, she had demonstrated that she was in total control of her body, and that she would not harm him. Spong came to regard this as a great gift from Skana to him, as he has not since experienced fear in the presence of an orca.
In 1968, Spong delivered a lecture at the University of British Columbia, describing his experience with the two whales at the Vancouver Aquarium. He described the whales as "highly intelligent, social animals" and advised that they should not be kept in captivity. He proposed transferring the whales to a semi-wild environment (such as Pender Harbour) in order to study them in their natural habitat. Spong also mentioned that humans could someday communicate with whales.
His comments from this lecture were published in local newspapers and interviews with radio stations were scheduled. However, Dr Newman from the Aquarium did not appreciate Spong's recommendation about freeing the whales. This pushed Newman to suspend the research project Spong was working on. Shortly afterwards, Spong's contract with the Aquarium came up for renewal. It was not renewed.
In June 1969, Spong gave an uninvited address to the Western Psychological Association in which he discussed his belief that taking psychedelic drugs helped him tune in to the whales' space and that this could help with orca–human communications
Killer Whale (Orcinus Orca) Foundation, or KWOOF was the foundation that Spong created after leaving the Aquarium. One purpose of the foundation was to stop whale captures in British Columbia, Canada. In December 1969, Spong travelled to Pender Harbour, where fishermen had captured 12 whales. Of the 12 whales, only one whale, Corky, has survived in captivity for more than 50 years. Spong has spent over three decades trying to free her.
In 1972, Spong was living in a hippie commune in North Vancouver, called the "Maplewood Mudflats". The District of North Vancouver wanted to turn the mudflats into a shopping centre. Spong led the opposition to the proposal. He was interviewed about the community in a film made for the NFB (National Film Board of Canada), by Robert Fresco and Kris Paterson, called Mudflats Living.https://www.nfb.ca/film/mudflats_living/ Another film was made by Seattle film maker Sean Malone called Living on the Mud. While the squatters were evicted and their homes burned, the mudflats ultimately became a conservation area and wildlife preserve.
In the summer of 1970, Spong established the OrcaLab on Hanson Island. The Lab is located about 200 miles northwest of Vancouver on Blackney Pass. Orca families travel through the pass towards Johnstone Strait where they feast on migrating salmon, socialise with others of their community, and visit special "rubbing beaches". Hanson Island was an ideal place to study orcas in their natural habitat.
At the laboratory, Spong started to monitor and record the modulations and songs sung by the whales with a hydrophone hung over a convenient rocky shelf in the bay and connected to a tape recorder. Eventually OrcaLab created a network of hydrophones that covered 50 square kilometres (19 sq mi) of ocean that became recognised as Critical Habitat for the Northern Resident orca community. At first the hydrophone signals were transmitted to the Lab by VHF radio, then by wireless microwave network. The operational philosophy of OrcaLab as a land based research station is "learning without interference".
In 2000, Spong with Japanese colleagues set up an online portal for listening to the whales called "www.orca-live.net" which broadcast live sounds from OrcaLab's hydrophones via the Internet, making it possible for people around the world with internet access to hear the sounds of orcas. The project also included a link to live video cameras. Viewers could log in and chat to fellow orca enthusiasts. A sister site was set up in Japan to watch turtles under the Nature Network banner. The turtle aspect of the project eventually ended, but the orca webcast continues. and has expanded in partnership with explore.org.
In the 1980s, the forest of Hanson Island was threatened by clearcut logging. Spong with his wife Helena Symonds and many allies including the 'Namgis First Nation mounted a campaign that opposed the logging. Hundreds of letters from people around the world, including many from Europe and Japan were written to the British Columbia government. The logging company ownership changed. At one point, Spong travelled to New Zealand to appeal to the chairman of the new owner, Fletcher Challenge. Eventually, the forest of Hanson Island was protected under negotiations between the BC government, First Nations, environmental groups and logging companies that established the Great Bear Rainforest. Today it is managed by the Yukusam Heritage Society which includes representatives from three First Nations whose territory includes Hanson Island. OrcaLab's work continues under license from the Society. Yulusam is the traditional name of Hanson Island.
In 1972, Spong met the Canada author Farley Mowat who was on a national tour promoting his book A whale for the killing. Farley convinced Spong about the desperate plight faced by many species of great whales. Spong with his wife Linda began a campaign as the Canadian branch of Project Jonah aimed at convincing Canada to stop whaling. Within a year, Canada did so. Spong set his sights higher and convinced Greenpeace, at the time an anti-nuclear testing organisation, to take up the whales' cause. Vancouver Sun columnist Bob Hunter and other Greenpeacers formed the Stop Ahab committee of Greenpeace and set about planning to confront whalers on the high seas. In 1973, Spong and Hunter put on the Christmas Whale Show at Vancouver's Queen Elizabeth Theatre to raise funds for a trip to Japan aimed at convincing that country to stop whaling. Canadian musician Gordon Lightfoot called during the show and pledged $5,00 to support the effort. In 1974, Spong and his family travelled to Japan and made presentations at 21 venues that included theatres in shopping malls and schools. Spong also met with whaling industry and government officials. These efforts unsuccessful, Spong returned to Canada convinced about the need to confront the whalers directly. In 1975, Spong and his family took the now named Greenpeace Whale Show across Canada, then to Iceland and Norway. In Norway, they visited the Bureau of International Whaling statistics where Spong, presenting himself as a whale scientist interested in sperm whales, obtained access to whalers' log books showing the locations of whaling operations off the coast of California. When Hunter received this information he knew where to head but kept the information to himself until close to the time the Russian whaling fleet would be off the coast of California. The Phyllis Cormack headed there in July, confronting the whalers off Mendocino. A dramatic scene showing a harpoon flying over the heads of Hunter and Paul Watson in a tiny zodiac was aired on Walter Cronkite's CBS evening news show just before the International Whaling Commission (IWC) met in London. The result was a dramatic uplift in public awareness of the whaling issue and pressure on the Commission which was essentially a whalers' club at that point. Spong by happenstance managed to attend the Commission’s meeting, and subsequently was able to attend meetings of the IWC Scientific Committee and plenary meetings of the Commission as an NGO observer, one of many whose aim was to end commercial whaling.
In 1982, the International Whaling Commission voted by 3/4 majority to impose a moratorium on commercial whaling. The moratorium came into effect in 1986 and still stands today.
In 1990, Switzerland’s Bellerive Foundation hosted a conference to discuss cetaceans in captivity. Spong presented information about the Northern Resident A5 pod member named Corky (A16) and suggested her as a candidate for release back into the wild, where her family was well known. Corky had been captured in Pender Harbour, British Columbia, in 1969 and taken to Marineland of the Pacific, then to SeaWorld San Diego. An international campaign followed highlighted by appeals to Sea World from children from 21 countries who contributed painted patches that were turned into a huge banner nearly 2 km long. Corky’s FREEDOM BANNER was the inspiration of Austria's Niki Entrup. It was displayed around Sea World, in European capitals, and in western US states and British Columbia. Sea World remained obstinate in refusing to consider releasing Corky. In 2000 Corky's mother Stripe (A23) died, ending the opportunity for them to meet again. The campaign to Free Corky continued and presently involves creation of the Double Bay Sanctuary on Hanson Island as Corky's retirement home where ideally she would be cared for by the Sea World staff she knows well. Owner of the old Double Bay lodge Michael Reppy, who is building the Sanctuary, has the support of the ‘Namgis First Nation as well as Spong. Corky is still alive (as of July 2022) so she still has a chance to meet her family again.
The orca, or killer whale, is a toothed whale that is the largest member of the oceanic dolphin family. It is the only extant species in the genus Orcinus. Orcas are recognizable by their black-and-white patterned body. A cosmopolitan species, orcas are found in diverse marine environments, from Arctic to Antarctic regions to tropical seas.
The Vancouver Aquarium is a public aquarium located in Stanley Park in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. In addition to being a major tourist attraction for Vancouver, the aquarium is a centre for marine research, ocean literacy education, climate activism, conservation and marine animal rehabilitation.
A5 Pod is a name given to a group of orcas found off the coast of British Columbia, Canada. It is part of the northern resident population of orcas - a name given to the fish-eating orcas found in coastal waters ranging from mid-Vancouver Island in British Columbia up through Haida Gwaii and into the southeastern portions of Alaska. The orcas of the Northern Resident community are divided into vocally distinctive clans known as the A clan, the G clan, and the R clan. Members of the A5 Pod belong to the A clan. As of 2013, A5 Pod consisted of 10 members.
Corky II, often referred to as just Corky, is a female captive orca from the A5 Pod of northern resident orcas. At approximately the age of four, Corky was captured from Pender Harbour off the coast of British Columbia on December 11, 1969. She has lived at SeaWorld San Diego in San Diego, California since 1987. As of 2023, she is the oldest and longest kept captive orca. SeaWorld San Diego celebrates her birthday on 2nd January every year.
Sealand of the Pacific was a public aquarium in South Oak Bay at The Oak Bay Marina, near the city of Victoria, in British Columbia, Canada. It housed a number of orcas: Haida, Nootka, and Tilikum. In 1991, all three were involved in an incident in which a trainer, Keltie Byrne, was killed. The aquarium subsequently closed and sold its orcas to SeaWorld.
Johnstone Strait is a 110 km (68 mi) channel along the north east coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. Opposite the Vancouver Island coast, running north to south, are Hanson Island, West Cracroft Island, the mainland British Columbia Coast, Hardwicke Island, West Thurlow Island and East Thurlow Island. At that point, the strait meets Discovery Passage which connects to Georgia Strait.
Orcas are large, powerful aquatic apex predators. There have been multiple killer whale attacks on humans in the wild, but such attacks are less common than those by captive orcas. In captivity, there have been several non-fatal and four fatal attacks on humans since the 1970s. Experts are divided as to whether the injuries and deaths were accidental or deliberate attempts to cause harm.
Springer, officially named A73, is a wild orca from the Northern Resident Community of orcas, which frequents the waters off the northern part of Vancouver Island every summer. In January 2002, Springer, then a calf developmentally equivalent to a human toddler, was discovered alone and emaciated some 250 miles from the territory of her family. Experts identified Springer by her vocal calls that are specific to her family, or "pod," and by examining photographs of her eye patch. They were also able to determine where Springer's pod was currently located.
Dozens of orcas are held in captivity for breeding or performance purposes. The practice of capturing and displaying orcas in exhibitions began in the 1960s, and they soon became popular attractions at public aquariums and aquatic theme parks due to their intelligence, trainability, striking appearance, playfulness, and sheer size. As of October 31, 2023, around 57 orcas are in captivity worldwide, 30 of which were captive-born. At that time, there were 18 orcas in the SeaWorld parks.
Michael Andrew Bigg was an English-born Canadian marine biologist who is recognized as the founder of modern research on killer whales. With his colleagues, he developed new techniques for studying killer whales and, off British Columbia and Washington, conducted the first population census of the animals anywhere in the world. Bigg's work in wildlife photo-identification enabled the longitudinal study of individual killer whales, their travel patterns, and their social relationships in the wild, and revolutionized the study of cetaceans.
Captured in 1964, Moby Doll was the first orca to survive in captivity for more than two days, and the second to be displayed in a public aquarium exhibit. The availability, for the first time, of an orca that could be studied at close quarters alive initiated pioneering research. From a recording of Moby Doll's calls, he was years later identified as a member of J Pod of the southern resident orcas.
Anti-whaling refers to actions taken by those who seek to end whaling in various forms, whether locally or globally in the pursuit of marine conservation. Such activism is often a response to specific conflicts with pro-whaling countries and organizations that practice commercial whaling and/or research whaling, as well as with indigenous groups engaged in subsistence whaling. Some anti-whaling factions have received criticism and legal action for extreme methods including violent direct action. The term anti-whaling may also be used to describe beliefs and activities related to these actions.
Alexandra Bryant Hubbard Morton is an American and Canadian marine biologist best known for her 30-year study of wild killer whales in the Broughton Archipelago in British Columbia. Since the 1990s, her work has shifted toward the study of the impact of salmon farming on Canadian wild salmon.
Orion was constructed as a whale catcher in 1904, in Christiana, Norway. She was a steam-powered vessel, 91 feet (28 m) long, 17 feet (5.2 m) wide, displacing 109 tonnes. Robert Lloyd Webb, author of a book on commercial whaling in the Pacific Northwest, wrote that she was the first steam-powered chaser boat in British Columbia.
Whaling: British Columbia's Least Known and Most Romantic Industry is a silent black-and-white documentary film produced by Vancouver filmmaker A. D. Kean in the years 1916–1919. It is an early example of Canadian documentary filmmaking, and is the most complete of Kean's surviving productions. It is probably the earliest extant film to depict steam whaling on the west coast of North America.
Whaling on the Pacific Northwest Coast encompasses both aboriginal and commercial whaling from Washington State through British Columbia to Alaska. The indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast have whaling traditions dating back millennia, and the hunting of cetaceans continues by Alaska Natives and to a lesser extent by the Makah people.
Walter the Whale (Skana) was a star orca (killer whale) during the early era of captive orcas in the 1960s. In 1967, following the death of Namu, the only other established star orca was Shamu. Walter the Whale was the orca's advertised name at first, but she was later renamed Skana.
Moby Doll, who in 1964 in British Columbia became the second ever captive orca, was the first orca to be studied scientifically at close quarters alive.
The Yukon Harbor orca capture operation was the first planned, deliberate trapping of a large group of orcas. 15 southern resident orcas were trapped by Ted Griffin and his Seattle Public Aquarium party on 15 February 1967, in Yukon Harbor on the west side of Puget Sound. The first four orcas that had been taken into captivity had been captured singly, and mostly opportunistically. Those four were named Wanda, Moby Doll, Namu, and Shamu—who was then the only surviving one. Through them, interest in orcas had escalated.
Weyler, R (2004). Greenpeace. Vancouver, BC: Raincoast Books. In Stop Ahab pp. 197–236; Zelko, F (2013), Make It a Green Peace, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 161–180