After 50 years, the message in orcas' Penn Cove return

By The Herald Editorial Board

It would be nice to think that all is forgiven.

Whether out of forgiveness, fading memory or just simple animal behavior, the Southern Resident orcas’ L pod — one of three resident pods in the Salish Sea — returned last week to Whidbey Island’s Penn Cove, for what’s believed to be the first time in more than 50 years since the inhumane roundups in the summers of 1970 and 1971 of 80 to 100 killer whales and the capture and sale to marine amusement parks of seven orcas.

Among those captured and sold was Tokitae — known more famously as Lolita — who in August last year, after spending her life in captivity in a small Miami, Fla., aquarium tank and trained to perform, died of renal failure, even as plans were made to bring the whale back to her native waters.

Beginning with the capture of Namu in 1965 in a fishing net in British Columbia and continuing through the mid-1970s — even after passage in 1972 of the Marine Mammal Protection Act — orcas were rounded up in the Salish Sea and other waters worldwide. The Penn Cove roundups were brutal, using boats, an airplane, explosives and nets to corral the pod in Penn Cove’s narrow channel, south of Oak Harbor. Four to five orca calves drowned during the capture or were caught in netting left behind after the hunt’s end.

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https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/editorial-after-50-years-the-message-in-orcas-penn-cove-return/