Orca Dreams
Imagine what they thought, sedated, drifting, thoughts coming in waves, one over the other. Did they think they were swimming? If they were, the water felt curiously... thin, and the surface, instead of mirroring their own faces back at them, swam with tiny specs of light. And all around... this strange whirring noise, a chugging sound so heavy and physical, it almost seemed as though it would hit them, instead of just brushing by.The orca, Corky, was captured near British Colombia in 1969 when she was approximately 5 years old. She was placed in a circular pool with another orca, Orky, a male captured the year before. In 1977, Corky became the first orca to give birth in captivity, though the calf was stillborn. She gave birth 6 more times, but the longest any of the calves lived was forty-seven days.
In January of 1987, the whales were moved to Sea World, where they were immersed in the many whales there, who live in a series of large pools. Corky, pregnant at the time, bore her last calf a few months later, stillborn. Within the year, Orky, her companion of seventeen years, (longer than most celebrity marriages) was dead.
Now, Corky is approximately forty years old, and partially blind in one eye (though essentially healthy and about halfway through the natural orca lifespan.) She performs at Sea World daily, under the Sea World brand name, Shamu.
They don't move Orca isn't in tanker trucks or strange contraptions built with nets at sea. They airlift them in hammocks, the ends of which are held by helicopters. Obviously, they have to be massively sedated to do this. They can only be moved at night so that the whales don't get dehydrated. It might be difficult to make out from the ground, but it interferes with reception -- antennaes, the occasional satellite dish. (Few people had mobile phones in 1987.) And of course, it's pretty dangerous.
There's a whole scene in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where a bomb turns into a whale that thinks it's flying for a brief moment before hitting the ground. That whale wasn't even travelling over part of one of the most populous areas in North America. What a spectacle it must have been. These great beasts gliding through the night, for a moment freed from the normal constraints of breeding and performing. For once able to swim among the stars instead of just below them.
posted by kuaptic. @ 8:06 AM
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