When Orcas Sing
June is Orca Awareness month. Celebrate these iconic and endangered whales!
Every summer solstice, a rocky beach on San Juan Island, Washington becomes a concert hall. Seattle’s City Cantabile Choir and other singers gather in Friday Harbor in the hope of calling the J, K, and L cherished family pods of Southern Resident orcas. An expectant crowd gathers at the lighthouse on Lime Kiln Point for the annual celebration of Orca Sing.
During past years, the diverse audience has included orca whales that locals call by nicknames: Wave Walker, Surprise, Slick, Spock. As Seattle’s City Cantabile Choir chants in syncopated harmonies broadcast through hydrophones, most of its singers keep one eye focused on the Salish Sea, hoping that J, K, and L family pods will join in our music.
Shaking and slapping our tambourines, we accompany the choir, beating brightly stylized skins of native drums. Some people play pan pipes, fluting their haunting, high- pitched piccolo tones that are still not as ultrasonic as orca whistles. Our limited human hearing can only fathom a fraction of sounds that Southern Resident orcas vocalize in sophisticated and incessant choirs of rapid-fire bleeps, shrills, chirping crescendos, and signature whistles. That doesn’t mean we cannot attempt interspecies singing with these big-brained fellow mammals, whose communication skills qualify as language and culture.
Heads swivel, and binoculars scan the surf for signs of those tall, thrilling dorsal fins and bright breaths of orcas surfacing. As I join in the Orca Sing choir’s upbeat descant, I wonder if our high-spirited singing — not just science — is another way to understand animals. After all, singing is an oral tradition that many species share. It crosses boundaries. It is how we can begin to connect with “the other.”
Sometimes when the sun and waves are just right, the orcas’ breaths as they rise in the waves create loud, colorful mists called “rainblows.” But now there is just the rhythmic slap of waves onshore and the shadows of sunset over this chilly, emerald sea. No orcas yet to join our singing. But I wonder if, underwater, the whales are listening to us as they cruise so close to each other and carried on their own complex, musical conversations.
“This summer our Orca Sing concert is dedicated to the memory of the orca J18, called Everett,” announces Frederick West, director of the Seattle Cantabile Choir.
The crowd hushes as we remember this young male orca who succumbed to a severe bacterial infection. Like orcs throughout the world, he was also full of toxic PCBs. Everett’s J pod family is led by a beloved matriarch, Granny. These matrilineal societies are some of the most family-oriented, peaceful, and altruistic of all animals. When the J, K, and L family pods greet each other in super-pod reunions, there is such ecstatic singing and chatter, it makes the Mormon Tabernacle choir seem a dull and dreary monotone.
Now the choir swings into a rousing reggae chorus and one Jamaican musician jams on his xylophone. Everyone hopes these tinkling keys will entice orcas to come join in the fun, as they so often do for Orca Sing.
Fred West reminds us, “Think about the primal love we have for our own children. Can we also offer that to our Salish Sea and these fellow creatures?”
The Orca Sing choir carries on. Sunlight shimmers in a shining path across the waves. Still no dorsal fins, no answering calls through our hydrophone speakers. Some people wander away from the lighthouse in disappointment.
I keep my binoculars trained on the darkening waves. This is, after all, a memorial, and our wild singing is sometimes also a lament. There are so many orcas lost in the critically endangered Southern Residents. The Center for Whale Research, which has studied the Southern Resident whales since 1976, reports that there are only 73 orcas left in J, K, and L family pods. There is also a 50 percent mortality rate for firstborn orca calves. Some scientists fear that this will be the last generation of orcas our children will ever know.
A search for solutions intensifies — removing dams that block salmon streams, decreasing toxic runoff from farming and human pollution, limiting whale-watching boats and container ship traffic. Due to climate change, pollution, and diminishing Chinook salmon, the J, K, and L pods are starving. Recently, Washington State legislature passed a series of bills meant to save Southern Resident orcas by protecting Chinook salmon habitat and regulating fisheries, shipping, and chemicals in consumer products. Save Our Wild Salmon and OrcaNetwork and WhaleWise.org are working to protect salmon; some conservation groups are even asking us to spare the salmon by not eating their precious food source.
As we hopefully watch the waves, singing, a fellow next to me shrugs. “Maybe this is a year the orcas just don’t show up to be with us.”
I nod, my spirits sag. But suddenly someone shouts — “Listen!” — and excitedly points to the loudspeaker as percussive creaks, fast clicking like a Geiger counter, and long supersonic squeals burst from the hydrophones.
The orca songs seem faster than sound as we try to match our harmonies with their acoustic accompaniment. Joyfully the choir launches into a soulful, but quick tempo “Hallelujah,” as six dorsal fins slice through the waves heading straight toward our shore. The orcas cartwheel, tail slap, and one rises in a spectacular breach.
“It’s J pod!” a little girl yells and rattles her tambourine over her head.
Everyone sings exuberantly, clapping. Bass drums echo, flutes soar into a register orcas can hear.
“There’s Granny!” a mother holds her son up on her shoulders to better see the elder whale leading her family, two calves in tow.
As Granny whistles, echoing in the exact key of the choir, the elegy changes into a celebration.
“Oh,” one of the orca researchers breathes, touching my shoulder in awe. “This is Everett’s family pod. They’re here for him.”
With ecstatic jazz runs on his xylophone, Fred West welcomes Granny and her J pod family to join in, their songs riffing with our voices. “They got our invitation,” West calls out, “as if on cue in their own opera.”
“Live long!” a mother sings, holding her toddler up to see a big breach and splash. “Live long.”~
This story originally appeared in Orion magazine in 2019. It is also a popular kid’s book, Wild Orca: The Oldest, Wisest Whale in the World. Since then Granny, the oldest matriarch in J pod, has died. Researchers estimate she was between 60 and 80 years old. Orca Sing 2023 will be June 24th in Friday Harbor, Washington. Watch video compilation of Orca Sing highlights.
Bio: Brenda Peterson is the author of over 20 books,her memoir, I Want to Be Left Behind: Finding Rapture here on Earth, which was selected as a “Top Ten Best Non-Fiction” book by the Christian Science Monitor and an Indie Next “Great Read,” by Independent Booksellers. Peterson’s latest non-fiction book is Wolf Nation: The Life, Death, and Return of Wild American Wolves, chosen as a “Best Conservation Book of the Year” by Forbes magazine. Her children’s books include Leopard and Silkie, Wild Orca, Catastrophe by the Sea, and the new illustrated book, Crane Maiden, with master Chinese illustrator, Ed Young. Her new mystery novel, Stiletto, is just out. www.BrendaPetersonBooks.com
