"They are powerful and intelligent predators, yet killer whales are, above all, families." "Families that hunt and play and travel together." "Take a look into the hidden lives of creatures that rule like lords" "over one of the richest ocean wilds on earth." "The journey is an attempt to peer with a camera into a hidden kingdom of killer whales in the Pacific North West," "a long time goal of diver and film-maker Theodore Pitcairn." "His destination is an area inhabited by about 300 killer whales in the straits between the British Columbia mainland and Vancouver Island." "Travelling to film the unseen the events of ocean life is a kind of continuing pilgrimage for Pitcairn." "I have come to appreciate that every place in the ocean has its own enchanting qualities." "Here we enter a world of cold beauty, of ice, mist and fog." "We have come here not only to film killer whales, but the ocean wilds in which they live." "I am curious to learn what makes this ocean habitat so special that hundreds of orcas congregate here." "To humans, the ocean here is unbearably cold." "I must protect myself from its sting by wearing a drysuit that seals out the frigid water." "Sometimes I can see only a few feet away through the murk of plankton and other particles." "Powerful currents often buffet me about." "These cold water winds blow constantly through the kelp forests of the bottom so that the realm of the killer whale seems like a place invented by animators who can make plants seem like a troupe of dancers." "Amid the swirling cold currents, life abounds." "Everywhere I point the camera there is something looking back at me." "Any shadowy corner can hold a surprise." "Curiosity is not limited to our species." "Sensing nothing either familiar or edible, the octopus puts up his guard." "Which for the most intelligent of all molluscs means transforming its smooth body into a facade of menace." "I know from experience it is not likely to attack something as large as me, it's just trying to look as fierce as possible." "When I don't appear terrified, it is time to leave." "For good measure, he appears to booby trap my path with a sunflower star, perhaps thinking that this predator, feared by other bottom creatures, will also intimidate me." "To avoid frightening the octopus," "Pitcairn moves off in a different direction, only to come upon another strange creature." "It looks like a snake, with the head of an old man." "Its name - the wolf eel - suggests ferociousness and its powerful jaws can crush spiny urchins." "But, like the octopus, it's not inclined to attack a human." "The wolf-eel pair pay Pitcairn little notice, preoccupied with courtship and their version of nuzzling." "The dive is interrupted suddenly by a reminder that Pitcairn is in the home waters of killer whales," "which are often heard before they are seen." "Through the murk of this sea they have detected my presence" "and,at first, seem curious, but one look and they are satisfied." "They return to the middle of the strait and go on about their business." "Maybe they just prefer their own company." "They are almost always seen in groups and rarely linger nearly a diver like me, which makes it difficult to observe their daily lives." "Maybe this group is moving from one good fishing area to the next." "They are so skilful in hunting fish that they seem to have ample time simply to relax and to do very little at all." "Other creatures in the killer whale realm below must survive by eating organic matter blowing by in the endless currents." "Like this nudibranch - a kind of snail without a shell." "Each invents its own way of capturing morsels of food." "Sweeping the water with its umbrella-like bonnet, the hooded nudibranch acts like a fisherman, casting a net to catch passing plankton." "The sea pen simply stands in the current, allowing bits of food to lodge in its plume-like body." "The basket star, an animal that looks like a small bush in winter, snags passing food with it branches." "Barnacles scoop through the water with their feathery back legs and eat whatever they catch." "Sometimes the underwater breezes deliver a windfall." "The jellyfish can rise and descend by pulsing." "But its direction through the sea is determined mostly by the currents." "Pretty as a flower, the tentacles of the anemone are not only sticky but armed with powerful stinging cells." "It's a sitting predator, awaiting whatever the currents might send in its direction." "The jellyfish may have travelled hundreds of miles to get here, but once in the grasp of the an anemone, its journey is over." "Killer whales are not the only formidable creatures here, but through size and intelligence, they dominate this undersea world, as strikingly as humans do the land." "To better understand them," "Pitcairn seeks out someone who knows them intimately." "Biologist John Ford spends his entire professional life watching and pondering the culture of killer whales or orcas." "He has done so since the early 70s, like an anthropologist studying an ocean tribe." "Few know them as well, or have made so many discoveries about their way of life." "Day after day he observes, records, photographs." "Accumulating over decades a catalogue that identifies not only individual whales, but entire family trees." "The calls of the whales are often loud enough to be heard from the boat and Ford has learned to pay special attention to these sounds." "Studying underwater recordings," "Ford was among the first to recognise that killer whales communicate in dialects distinctive to each family group or pod." "An individual's family heritage can be determined from the unique calls it makes." "To catalogue the identity of every individual whale he encounters," "Ford records distinguishing characteristics and assigns both names and numbers." "37 and 46 they are two brothers, just swimming together," "just relaxing with a bellyful of chum salmon and enjoying themselves and enjoying this boat." "how close they want to get." "For all the years of observation, researchers like Ford are still baffled by a great deal of killer whale behaviour." "The whale that was flipper slapping and tail slapping and following us along there was A64, schooner, just a juvenile." "Not really sure what whales are doing when they make those kind of behaviours because it depends on the context and there is always kind of a curious thing to me when all the rest of the whales in the area are just going about their business" "and one individual like that one seems agitated or worked up about something and displays these kind of things over and over again for sometimes hours at a time." "Because monitoring from a boat is limited by weather," "Ford has installed a permanent sound monitoring system." "Linked to a transmitter, it broadcasts continuously to his office the world's first all killer whale radio station." "The live signal from the Robson Bight area coming down to the Vancouver aquarium here by a high-quality digital line, so we are listening as if we were in our little boat with a hydrophone at Robson Bight, but instead we are down here" "200 miles to the south, listening live." "This is actually a catalogue of the calls that the whales make, so we can match up the patterns this way." "So when it goes that that is a N4 call." "Young animals that are born into the pod learn those unique family dialects." "Their vocal dialects represent a kind of a family acoustic badge" "that identify the pod and help to keep the integrity and the identity of the pod together." "My goal is to film them underwater in their own fluid realm," "to try to convey how the world looks and feels to them." "While they don't seem to like swimming close to divers, they often like to be near boats," "so we experiment with a camera suspended on a pole, hoping to get some close-up views of these wary creatures." "We get a few tantalising glimpses through the murk, but not everything we hoped for." "We will have to find a location where they are more at ease and devise a way to place our camera in their world without attracting their attention and suspicion." "As the camera team deliberates over how best to film killer whales, an immense change is underway in the kingdom the whales rule beneath the surface." "Spring arrives in this world of shadows and ghostly white anemones, marked by the appearance of strange matter adrift in the currents." "It's the stuff of life, and it is everywhere." "A female sea cucumber prepares to launch a bundle of eggs." "Nearby, a male has begun to eject sperm." "Conception among most bottom dwellers occurs not through intimacy with a mate, but by blindly discharging the elements of new life into the passing currents." "The drifting eggs or sperm of each individual will mix with other reproductive cells in a moment of fertilisation." "The ocean itself is the womb." "Throughout the coastal seas, creatures of the ocean floor cast the seeds of their next generation into the liquid breezes." "Turning the ocean into a soup of reproductive matter." "But a great percentage of the spawn sent off by creatures like the slime sea star, is likely to be intercepted." "For hungry finish and filter feeders, the seeds of new life are just another kind of food to pluck from the currents." "The killer whales are mostly just observers their world explodes each March with a rush of predators." "Dolphins, harbour seal seabirds and sea lions all attracted to a massive spawning event that overshadows those of the bottom dwellers." "Tens of millions of herring stream from the open" "Pacific toward the British Columbia shoreline to spawn." "To get there they must make it through a gauntlet of carnivores." "Panicked by the appearance of predators, each fish seeks safety in the middle of the school, producing what looks like a giant silver organism, trying desperately to find a safe path to its spawning grounds." "I encounter so many things in the sea that could not occur on land." "In the dense embrace of water, a thousand weightless creatures whirl and dart side-by-side like an artwork come to life." "I drift beneath it, mesmerised." "The local people call it simply a fish ball, belying the elegant symmetry and beauty of what I see down here." "The relentless attacks by birds, sea mammals and larger fish continue, but the herring are unable to turn seaward and flee." "Programmed by their genes to spawn, they have no alternative but to push onward to the shallows." "The assault from above escalates." "In these shallow waters there is no place to hide." "Gulls wait at the surface, murres and cormorants dive deep enough to strike from the sides and below." "For a time, the annual herring frenzy so dominates life along the coast, that it attracts even migratory grey whales into the realm of the killer whales." "Among the patches of seafoam fringing the shore, another kind of white phenomenon appears signalling that throngs of male herrings have begun to disperse their sperm into the sea." "In places the shallows turn milk white." "The release of these clouds of sperm or milt triggers a reproductive frenzy." "The females try to press their eggs into the milt deposited by the males on the bottom." "All the while, the milt drifts upward in such volume that vision becomes difficult." "A single female can produce 25,000 eggs the result is an undersea blizzard of almost incomprehensible proportions." "Sticky white herring eggs encrust virtually every surface of the shallows, from eel-grass and rocks" "to crab shells." "Nearly all of the eggs will be lost to predators and the whims of the sea." "But if only one in every 5000 produces an adult, the herring population will be sustained." "For gulls, the appearance of herring means a season of plenty." "Each receding tide uncovers a feast of eggs." "There is such a profusion of nourishment, that the grey whales come all the way into the shallows to partake." "Raking the eel-grass with its baleen plates, one of the largest creatures in the sea feeds on eggs the size of bird seed." "Though most of the herring return to deeper waters, some die of wounds or stress." "The sunflower star takes care of those left behind." "Oddities appear under water during the herring spawning." "A hemlock tree seems to grow from the bottom of the sea." "Observing the annual herring feast over centuries, native peoples sought ways of exploiting it for human food." "They discovered that spawning herring were attracted to hemlock for some reason." "Along the west coast of Vancouver Island, the Hesquiat tribe still harvests eggs deposited on the hemlock branches they set up early each Spring in advance of the spawning." "Like their ancestors, present-day Hesquiats treasure the herring caviar as a delicacy." "Their harvest is purely for tribal consumption." "But a taste for herring eggs is not limited to native people here." "In another cove, spawning herring pass among kelp fronds strung artificially on lines." "The Ahousaht and Toquat peoples of Vancouver Island have modified their traditional herring harvests to take advantage of the great demand for herring eggs elsewhere." "In Japan, herring roe is a delicacy that commands high prices." "The tribes and some non native fishermen as well, catch schools of herring using fishing nets," "then transfer them into netted enclosures where they spawn on the kelp fronds." "The captive herring school attracts nonhuman harvesters as well." "River otters descend from nearby streams to fill their bellies with herring." "Working under commercial licences, each year the two native tribes can each collect as much as 40 tonnes of eggs on kelp." "What is merely food for otters is big business for humans." "Such commercial harvests can be worth millions of dollars." "Egg-laden kelp fronds are salted, packed and shipped by air to Japan today." "Though the industry arose in the 1970s, such trading actually began a century ago, when Japanese entrepreneurs obtained herring eggs from tribes father north along the coast and sailed with them all away across the Pacific." "Yet the commercialism is mixed with an ancient respect for the cycles of nature." "When the harvest ends, the nets walling the inclusion are opened, permitting the herring to escape in the hope they will return and spawn again next spring." "Though killer whales nibble at the spawning schools, herring make up less than 5% of their diet." "They are awaiting a spawning event still to come that will bring their favourite prey into these waters." "Yet as the killer whales mark time, the greatest exploitation of the herring is about to begin." "It dwarfs the hunting by ocean animals and the harvesting by natives" "and Vancouver Island Harbour's commercial fishing boats await the start of a different kind of herring frenzy." "The opening of the herring season is the beginning of an ocean goldrush." "To prevent overfishing, authorities stringently limit the commercial herring season, often to only a single daily each year." "Sometimes to only one hour." "One hour in which many fishermen must haul-in most of their fishing income for the entire year." "So valuable is the fishery that luck can bring boat owners a near- fortune in a day and failure can mean bankruptcy." "It's a high-stakes drama in which not a second can be lost." "After racing to find a school using sonar, they must quickly encircle it with the same net," "then draw the net tight, often catching more than herring." "Making money on herring requires spending it." "A seiner and its complement of equipment can cost a million and a half dollars." "But, depending on luck and skill, in their brief window of opportunity, they may pull in anywhere from 20 to 200 tonnes of herring." "The only market is Japan, and prices fluctuate with the Japanese economy." "There have been years when the catch of a single boat brought in a quarter of million dollars." "An unintended catch of large mammals can mean damaged nets and panicked animals." "The fishermen give the sea lions every opportunity to escape." "And one by one, they all do." "Herring return to the same waters each years to spawn." "If too many are caught, those waters will be barren in future years." "Already, some areas no longer support a fishery and there are debates over whether the herring population is being jeopardised by too much fishing." "So intense is the rush to haul in fish, captains can imperil both their boats and crews by overloading." "Even large vessels can be overturned by 200 tonnes of fish in their net." "The catch of herring for their eggs is one of the main drivers of British Colombia's fishing economy." "But unlike the harvest by marine animals and native tribes, no herring survive to return to the sea." "The eggs will be taken from dead females for sale to Japan." "The tonnes of remaining herring carcasses will be sold not as human food, but for the most part, as fertiliser." "As Spring turns to summer, the flood of life awaited by the killer whales approaches from the open sea." "Salmon by the millions in wave after wave." "The killer whales residing along this coast prefer salmon above all other foods." "To catch them, pod-members spread out and comb the area." "They send out sonar like high frequency clicks that echo off objects in the sea," "giving them an acoustic means of detecting their prey through murky waters." "Through summer and into Fall, those salmon that survive seek out their natal streams and begin a difficult journey against currents and rapids." "Having survived killer whales, they now meet a terrestrial equivalent." "But survival is not their purpose." "After spawning, all the salmon will die." "Adult grizzlies and their cubs shun the dead fish in search of those still alive." "In the meantime, they snack on the salmon eggs that are in the bottom." "When more salmon arrived, the bears feast relentlessly." "Grizzlies face a deadline as fall approaches." "To survive the long sleep of winter, they must pack on as much fat as possible." "Some gain 300 pounds or more most of the weight coming from long days of eating salmon." "It can be both filling, and exhausting." "For John Ford, salmon season provides an opportunity to learn more about killer whale feeding techniques and preferences." "An experienced eye sees a capture in a quick lunge." "Time has shown that the killer whales hunt all six of the salmon species found here." "It looked to me like a chum, about the right size." "And it was quite a prolonged chase there, huh?" "We saw them take a chum salmon, very likely there is a big run of chum salmon coming through this strait today and we managed to get a scale sample from that kill." "And we will be able to identify what species it is from the unique quality of the scale." "As if from nowhere, a pack of white-sided dolphins appears, interrupting the killer whale hunt." "The dolphins rocket about, bothering the whales like a gang of rowdy youngsters." "It's an odd mingling of two marine mammals." "But Ford sees it often." "Those dolphins like to pester the whales." "We see them doing it to humpback whales, as well." "Where they will chase them around and smack them with their tails and just generally be kind of pesky, for whatever reason." "Suddenly, and inexplicably, the dolphin pack disappears." "Other sea mammals in the vicinity seem to be on alert, as if some kind of menace approaches." "The menace is real, a pack of aggressive killer whales passes through, driving harbour seals ashore" "More nomadic than the resident whales of the region and travelling in smaller families, these transients also prefer the meat of sea lions and dolphins to fish." "Distinguished by tall, pointed dorsal fins, these mammal eaters don't seem to mingle with their fish-eating cousins." "Evidence of the often violent ways of transients can be graphic." "Biologist Cathy Heisey examines the body of a dead dolphin found at sea by a boater." "Like the pack that interrupted the hunt, it is a white-sided dolphin." "I can tell you for certain that it was killed by a killer whale just judging by the teeth rake marks on its body." "And whether it was killed by transient killer whales or resident killer whales I can't tell you, but my guess is that it is transients, because they are the only ones that we have seen fatally attacking animals," "and what is surprising to me is that they didn't eat it because they obviously injured it and perhaps played with it even for a while after they killed it just judging by the different types of rake marks that are on its body" "they are all different angles and are all quite deep." "Until the early 1970s, the realm of killer whales in British Colombia lay mostly beyond the interests of humanity." "But the curiosity of scientists and film-makers has since fuelled a popular fascination with these intelligent creatures." "People come from around the world, hoping to catch a glimpse of wild orcas." "Identification catalogues enable them to learn the name and family history of the creatures they watch." "Some learn for the first time that the swimmers before them are travelling families whose social relationships are among the most complex of any mammals on earth." "A family like this is led by a mother and all of her young will remain with her as long as she lives." "Approaching the boat is not just a juvenile whale it's someone's daughter, sister, granddaughter." "But no matter how close observers get, they see only that tiny fraction of the killer whale's existence that takes place in our world of air." "Pitcairn and his friends have devised a plan to peer, at least briefly into the hidden part of killer whale existence, by going where other visitors cannot." "In these undisturbed waters, we come upon a family bound somewhere through the morning mist and cold." "For a moment they don't seem like mighty predators" "just a family on a lonely journey." "Pitcairn's destination appears unremarkable." "A beach covered by a bed of smooth pebbles that extends out into the shallows." "But, in fact, it is a special place where killer whales may let down their guard." "In hopes of capturing a few moments of killer whale behaviour here, the team arrives with an arsenal of equipment." "Pitcairn and his team have secured special permission to film in this ecological reserve a whale sanctuary off-limits to whale watchers." "To avoid disturbing the whales, no diver will enter the water, only a remotely controlled camera." "The underwater cameraman must learn to practise his craft sitting on dry land before a miniature steering wheel." "The team will set up camp, then wait to see if any whales show up." "As they prepare, killer whales sounds arise just offshore - an auspicious sign." "They toss a hydrophone into the water." "Pitcairn's worry is that the effort will turn out to be a waste of time." "This is his second attempt." "The previous year, the team waited three weeks and no whales ever showed up." "Every precaution has been taken to avoid disrupting killer whale behaviour," "but there is no way to know if the wary animals will shy away, even from an untended camera." "The wait begins." "On only the second day, they sight a killer whale family, rounding the point headed toward them." "The underwater microphones pick up the raspy sound of a whale scraping against the bottom." "The area is called a rubbing beach because killer whales frequently seek it out to rub their bodies against the bed of pebbles." "No one is sure why." "Their markings show them to be a family well-known to scientists in the area." "A 52-year-old matriarch named Stripe, her three children and a grandson." "The tallest fin belongs to her 28 year old son Okey-solo the most enthusiastic among them when it comes to rubbing." "Her 18-year-old daughter Ripple has a two year old son of her own," "Midsummer, who seems reluctant to rub, but follows his mother when she makes a pass across the bottom." "Children at play, adults enjoying a relaxing swim," "it seems the undersea equivalent of a family day at the beach." "Though Stripe also rubs occasionally, the matriarch stays close to be her grandson and youngest son, seven year old Fife." "Stripe knows how quickly tragedy can strike." "Over the years, she has lost three of her young:" "One captured for a marine park, one struck by a ferry, one to unknown causes." "Little Midsummer continues to frolic of the beach, but he won't dare descend to rub the bottom." "His uncle, on the other hand, can't get enough." "An adult male like Okey-solo may have fathered young of his own, but they remain with their mothers in other family groups." "Okey-solo will not leave his own mother all of her life." "Some males simply disappear when their mother dies." "No killer whales in the world, other than the 200 living around northern" "Vancouver Island, are known to rub like this." "We are as puzzled as other observers why do they rub?" "Some believe it is a way of scraping away parasites." "But if so, wouldn't killer whales elsewhere do the same thing?" "Perhaps we try too hard to find practical explanations for behaviour in the wild." "Maybe the killer whale families here have simply found a way to have fun, something that just feels good." "And across generations they have passed on this little tradition of pleasure and the whereabouts of these pebble beaches." "It's their secret." "And we are peeking into the place in their world where they can escape the labours of daily survival for an occasional hour of amusement." "As the others watch from offshore" "Okey-solo returns for one last rub" "Perhaps inspired by his uncle, little Midsummer finally descends for his first pass over the pebbles, rubbing and blowing bubbles at the same time." "Watching their last pass across the stones," "I am reminded yet again, hat we can't really comprehend the minds of creatures who dwell in a liquid world, so different from our own." "And yet we share with them, the concerns of parenthood and the devotion to family" "and maybe also a need for sheer fun." "At least that's what I would like to believe." "It is one thing to observe anonymous animals in the wild, quite another to know them by name, to know their ways of relaxing, to know even their family tragedies." "As they leave, they no longer seem to us strangers in an alien realm, but a family, heading home from the diversions of a summer afternoon."