A Full Circle Moment: The Return of L-Pod to Penn Cove

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From tragedy and trauma comes hope. Over

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50 years ago, in the 1970s, the southern resident

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orca population, L-Pod, were corralled tragically

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and with a lot of trauma associated with it, using

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bombs and boats to corral this orca population into

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Penn Cove in the Northeast Pacific, just

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off of the state of Washington coast. to be

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able to capture 80 orcas to send

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them to various aquariums so that people can connect to them

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and start this failed experiment that we've known

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to become as a failed experiment of orcas in captivity. It

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was brutal. Five orcas died, a

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lot of orcas were captured, including Tokite,

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or known as Lolita, who spent 50 years in the Miami Seaquarium

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by herself, still using the same calls

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as her LPOD mates. Unfortunately, she

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passed away in 2023, and recently, as last week, While

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many people were worried about the election in

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the U.S., the LPOD came home to

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Penn Cove. There were a couple of videos that were posted that

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showed the emotional response of people, the emotional response of

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people of Penn Cove and researchers to see this

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full circle moment of the orcas coming back to Penn Cove.

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Did they avoid it because of what happened 50 years ago? We'll

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really never know, but they are back and people are happy to

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see them. We're going to talk about why that's important for orcas,

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for people, in this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.

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Let's start the show. Hey

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everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the

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Ocean podcast. I am your host Andrew Lewin, and this is a podcast where you find out what's happening with

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the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for

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a better ocean by taking action. And if this is the first time

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you're here, you are in the right place if you want to know more things about

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ocean. You can find out more on this channel, on this podcast,

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however you're listening to this. We're on YouTube, we're on Spotify, we're on

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all your favorite podcast apps. But we're also at speakupforblue.com. If

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you want to find out more information about the ocean, go to speakupforblue.com. And

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if you want more information sent to you Monday to Friday, all

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about ocean news, jobs, new podcasts that we put out, new

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videos that we put out, you can sign up for our

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newsletter. Go to speakupforblue.com forward slash newsletter.

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That's speakupforblue.com forward slash newsletter. You can get access

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to videos that I don't really publish a lot of,

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but I've just started a vlog on the YouTube channel. If you go to that

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newsletter, you can get access to it. It's talking about the changes in

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government in the US and how we can start talking about it

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in science communication, how to approach science communication and

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how to speak to your audience. That's what I talk about. I'm gonna do more of these

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vlogs, probably about once a week or so, just to talk more about

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how we should be doing science communication from my point of view and my experience, and

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hopefully that'll help you start your journey, because we need more and more people to

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start talking about the ocean. Speaking of talking about the ocean and

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ocean news, I have some good news. Like, I know a lot of us who listen

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to this podcast or are part of this audience, We're a little disappointed by

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the election results from last week. And I completely understand and

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I completely am with you for a lot of different reasons other than climate

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change action and ocean action. However, I

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thought I would start off with a bit of a good news story. This is a story

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where I feel like has a lot of hope for the future. It starts off

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with a lot of trauma and tragedy, but has

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some hope for the future. And that story is about the Southern

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Resident Orca population. the LPOD actually of that population

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that came back last week to Penn

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Cove. If you've never heard of Penn Cove, Penn Cove is a famous site, notorious

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for an event that happened in the 1970s when people were allowed to

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capture orcas for the purposes of showing them in captivity.

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right for the sea worlds of the world and everything. Across the

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U.S. there were other aquariums, marine aquariums that were holding these animals

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and people can go up and look, and I mean they still have them in some

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areas, people can go and look at these animals and just be

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like, oh these are really cool and connect with them. That was an experiment that

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we know failed. If you have never seen the movie Blackfish, the documentary of

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the early 2010s, I highly recommend that you watch it. It is

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a little bit graphic. It does talk a lot about the capture and how

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violent that capture was, especially in Penn Cove. There

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were 80 total orcas captured, but

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there were five in Penn Cove that were killed during the capture. They

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got tangled in netting. and they drowned. One was

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a mature female, four were calves. Very, very tragic area.

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The LPOD, which the animals were from, had never come

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back to the Penn Cove since that tragic event

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until last week. Last week, there was a video that

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was circulating of Penn Cove and these orcas

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coming in. Some of them are breaching, you can see some calves having a

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good time. We don't know why they came back, and

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we really don't understand if there's like a significant reason and

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significant time or was it just because there was prey that they were

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following or they were just kind of navigating into new territories because

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maybe you know there wasn't prey somewhere else we don't really know

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but the people of Penco were pretty happy in fact the video I'm going to show you uh has

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a bell that bell is to signify when whales

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are in the area. They haven't been able to do it for orcas for over

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50 years and they're happy to ring the bell. A bit of an emotional video, so

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here it is. Check it out and I'll talk to you after. As

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you can see, the person who's never seen an orca population in

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scenes before, according to her video, she was

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able to record it for the first time and such a monumental event. Congratulations

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on capturing that on video. We appreciate you sharing that with us and we just

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love the fact that you know, this is a

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huge event to see these animals coming back after 50 years. They

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hadn't been there in over 50 years. Now, we do

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not know if it's a place where they would have gone normally before

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that event. We don't really know if it's a place that

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they just didn't want, they weren't interested in. you know after

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a while we just wanted to see that the fact

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that they come back it signifies maybe more to us humans that

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they've come back as a way of almost like a bit of a forgiveness like

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hey we know what you did last time because some of the some of the orcas that

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were from that time were still alive and let's be honest The

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event that started that, that led to the Pen

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Cove event of the capturing of 80 Southern Resident Whale populations affected

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the Southern Resident Whale populations so

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much so that they're now critically endangered. Now there are other things that

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have signified and have led to the contribution of that

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critically endangered status. They used to have 150 individuals, they're now down to

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just in the low 70s, 71, 72, maybe 73. It depends

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on how many calves they had this summer. I know they did lose some this summer. But

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there have been some major impediments

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to that rebuilding. One, these

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whales are long-lived species. They don't reproduce as much.

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They reproduce maybe one or two calves a year, and that

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has been a struggle. There's not a lot of food left for

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them. These southern resident orca populations are

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very stubborn in what they eat. They like, I believe it's

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salmon, chinook salmon or coho salmon, I can't remember, a specific type

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of salmon. That salmon population has dipped. We don't have as

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many as we used to, and that's because of a number of reasons. There's dams

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along the shoreline and the rivers that they usually go to. Just

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fish ladders that are just ineffective for what we want. There's climate

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change that affects the pH levels, affects the temperature. We

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don't know what's happening out in the ocean with the salmon,

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which basically get born in rivers, go out to the oceans for

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two to three years, then come back to spawn. So all that

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life cycle when they go to the ocean, they come back. Sometimes they come back in

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huge amounts. Sometimes they come back like a million of them. Sometimes

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it's like 12 million when they come back. So that really fluctuates and it's just not

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enough to sustain a population. Then you also have the

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bioaccumulation that happens of toxins because of

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plastic pollution, because of other toxins of bad

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water quality in certain areas. that bioaccumulate in

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the salmon, and then that, as the salmon get eaten by

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the orcas, that bioaccumulates in the orcas, and the orcas have been known to die

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due to toxins, due to plastic suffocation, and

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so forth. So there's a lot of things going against these orcas, which

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are a long-lived species, take a long time to mature sexually,

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so they're able to reproduce. Even the calves have trouble surviving

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within that first couple of years. And so it's been a very tragic

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time since that first event on August 8th in

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the 1970s and it just till now. It's just the

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recovery just hasn't been there and they haven't gone over 80 orcas

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in a long time, individuals of that southern resident population. So

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being able to maintain that, being able to build off of that and

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grow off of that has been a struggle, continues to be a struggle and

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we need to do a lot more to protect the ocean and protect those

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orcas, to protect their habitat, to protect their food, We

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can have those orcas stick around and grow in their population so

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that they're not, they can get out of that endangered status, critically endangered

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status. So that is a big problem. That's

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besides the point. The point right now is we're seeing a bit of a full

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circle moment, right? We're seeing that full circle moment where these animals

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are coming back into the cove. It's very joyful.

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As you saw in the video, you saw the bell ring. People were happy to

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see these orcas. They're playing, they're jumping around like

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nothing ever happened. Again, we don't know

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why these orcas are in Pen Cove, it could be for

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a variety of reasons. Could be due to food, could just be to

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exploration. Who knows what it is. These animals are very

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curious. These animals are very intelligent, emotionally,

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as well as being able to hunt and being able to locate food

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and proper habitats. So maybe this is a new thing. Maybe

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they'll come here. I don't know, but it's just one of those happy

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feel-good moments for a population that has had

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a lot of trauma, a lot of tragedy over the last 50 years,

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especially in that day in Penn Cove

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where five of the orcas were killed trying

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to be captured and a number of those animals being captured on

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that day. It's just a story I want to share. It's

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a quick one. There's nothing really more to go into it. If

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you want to follow this story and follow these

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orcas, there are a lot of creators on TikTok. I'll try to list them all that

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I know of that and put them in the show notes that you can follow that.

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There's a Cascadia Research, which is a company that looks after orcas

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and does a lot of research on orcas. There's NOAA that does a lot of

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research on orcas, University of British Columbia, University

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of Washington does a lot of work on orcas and

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that population, the southern resident population as

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well as the northern resident population and the transients. It's really good to

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get to know a lot of the different ones because They're so

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cool. They're such a cool animal. They're one of the only animals that

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we know of that will actually hunt for another member

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of its pod for them to eat. So they're not just

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out for themselves, they're out for the pod. It's a matriarchal pod. And

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it's just, it's really cool to learn about them. So

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if you want more information, I'll try and list as much as I can in the

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show notes. And if I'd love to hear if you've ever had sighting

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of those orcas in person, what your thoughts are

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on this event of them coming back, what

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do you think they're coming back for? Love to hear what you think, or you can DM me

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at HowToProtectTheOcean. Love to hear from you. Thank you so much

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for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Have