Orca in Open Water Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Half Title Page

  Title Page

  Dear Diary

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  About the Illustrator

  Glossary

  Talk About It

  Write About It

  More About Orcas

  Seaside Sanctuary

  Explore More

  Copyright

  Back Cover

  Dear Diary,

  The past few months have been crazy, and not just because I moved across the country. I never thought we’d leave Chicago. The city was home my whole life. I loved the rumbling above-ground trains, the massive skyscrapers, the sidewalks filled with people.… Believe it or not, I even liked my school. It was the type of place where it was cool to be smart.

  But then, right after school ended for the year, Mom and Dad announced we were moving. They decided to leave their jobs as marine biologists at the Shedd Aquarium and move the whole family to Charleston, South Carolina! They both got jobs running someplace called Seaside Sanctuary Marine Wildlife Refuge—jobs that were “too good to pass up,” as they put it.

  And at first, I couldn’t believe Seaside Sanctuary would ever seem like home. Everything was different—the humidity, the salty air, the palmetto trees, the old brick streets lined with massive live oaks. Not to mention the flat, quiet beaches with water warm enough to swim in all year—you don’t see that along Lake Michigan.

  But it hasn’t all been bad. For starters, I met my best friend, Olivia, on my first day at Seaside Sanctuary. She was sitting by the turtle pool, reading. By the end of the morning, I knew three very important things about Olivia:

  Her older sister, Abby, is the vet at the sanctuary.

  She doesn’t like talking to people she doesn’t know.

  She wants to be a dolphin researcher when she grows up.

  And I knew we were going to be best friends.

  I still miss Chicago. But between helping the volunteers with feedings, cleaning tanks, showing tourists around, and prepping seal food in the industrial-sized blender, I haven’t had much time to think about my old life. And one thing is for sure—at Seaside Sanctuary, I’m never lonely, and I’m never bored.

  Chapter 1

  “Let’s move out!” the captain shouted. The sharp blast of a horn sounded over the Puget Sound Harbor. The engines rumbled beneath my feet, and the Marie Curie, the research boat I was standing on, pulled away from the dock.

  I glanced over at Olivia, and we tightened our fingers on the metal railings of the bow of the ship. I couldn’t believe where we were. We’d flown out to the state of Washington—clear across the country from Charleston—two days ago. We weren’t alone, of course. My mom was there too. She was taking part in a month-long expedition to study the diet of orca whales near the San Juan Islands.

  When Mom first told me where she was going, I thought she’d meant somewhere in the Caribbean. But it turned out that the San Juan Islands were in the Pacific Northwest, off the coast of Washington. And when I found out the expedition was during summer break, I begged her to let Olivia and me come along. After what seemed like weeks of talking and phone calls and forms, the three of us boarded a plane for Seattle.

  The minute my sneakers crunched on the gravel path of the San Juan Marine Mammal Sanctuary, I felt like I was back at home. The outdoor pools for the small seals, the otter habitat, the big pool for rehabbing dolphins—if I closed my eyes, I might as well have been back at Seaside Sanctuary. They even had a wild sea pen, just like we did back home, with netting strung across a natural cove. We were one of only a few sanctuaries in the country to have one—apparently SJS was another.

  There were a few differences that made it clear I was no longer on the Carolina coast. For one thing, SJS only took mammals, so they didn’t have bird pens or turtle tanks like we did. And the air smelled different—colder, even like snow sometimes. There were rocks everywhere, where we had sand and grasses, and the ocean was rough and cold-looking and deep. Pine trees clung to the rocks and leaned over the sea. The ocean was far down the cliffs, above which were all the roads and houses. You couldn’t just stroll down to the water the way you could in Charleston.

  Finally the expedition was underway. I was so excited that I’d barely slept the night before. But we were really on the ship now, bright red life jackets strapped on, engines vibrating beneath our feet, cold spray hitting our faces, the dark, sloshing ocean unrolling in front of us.

  “When can we start looking for orcas?” I called to Mom. She was standing beside Arden Harrington, the head marine biologist at SJS. They were both looking through giant black binoculars mounted to the railing of the deck. They were the biggest binoculars I’d ever seen. They had to be two feet long.

  “As soon as you can!” Arden called back. She smiled at us. “Every pair of eyes helps. We’re trying to find pod J34. We were able to attach a satellite tag to one of the orcas in that pod last year. The tag sends signals to a satellite, which sends a message to a transmitter on the ground. Then the transmitting station sends us an email with the pod’s location. We’ve gotten the GPS coordinates. That should tell us where to look for the pod.”

  “Pods are orca family groups, right?” Olivia said.

  We’d both done some orca-related reading on the plane ride out here. To my surprise, I’d learned that orcas aren’t actually whales at all. They’re the largest members of the dolphin family.

  “Right,” Mom said, coming over to us. “Orcas live and hunt in really tight family groups, just like humans. They stay together for their entire lives. In fact, male orcas never leave their mothers. They go away to mate, but they always come back.”

  “Wow!” I said. “That is so cool.”

  “It really is,” Arden chimed in. “They’re the only mammals known to do that in the world, including humans.”

  “You’re not going to catch me living with my mom my whole life,” said a voice from behind us.

  I turned around and saw a skinny guy about my age coming out of the cabin. He was wearing three sets of regular-sized binoculars around his neck and had a mop of dark hair. His skin was deeply tanned, as if he’d spent many hours outside.

  “Oh please. You know you can’t get enough of me,” Arden said. She swatted playfully at his head. “Elsa and Olivia, meet Cooper. He’s my son and resident troublemaker.”

  “Thanks a lot, Mom. What an introduction.” Cooper rolled his eyes, and everyone laughed.

  Cooper made his way over to where Olivia and I were standing by the railing. “I’m Cooper,” he said. “Ach, my mom just said that.” He hit himself comically in the forehead with the heel of his hand.

  “Nice to meet you,” I replied. “I’m Elsa, and this is Olivia.”

  “Want some binoculars?” Cooper offered. He took off two of the pairs of binoculars and handed them to us.

  “Thanks,” I said. “We’ll be able to see a lot better now.” I slipped the binoculars over my neck before asking, “Do you live at SJS?”

  Cooper shook his head. “I wish. My mom and I live off-site. But I come over all the time.” He leaned his forearms on the metal railing and focused the binoculars on the ocean. “So did Mom bring you up to date on what
we’re looking for?”

  “Yeah.” I brought my own binoculars up to my eyes. “She said we’re looking for J34 pod. They tagged one of the orcas in that group last year, right?”

  “Yep.” Cooper nodded. “They want to see what they’re eating, mainly,” he told us, still peering through his binoculars. “And they want to take weather and temperature readings to study the environment where the orcas are spending their time.”

  Olivia and I looked at each other. “You must like orcas,” I said. “You know a lot about them.”

  “Yeah.” Cooper’s face turned slightly red, and he cleared his throat. “I want to be a marine biologist one day. Anyway, orcas are so cool. Wait until you see your first pod.”

  I appreciated Cooper’s enthusiasm. He seemed nice. Like someone I’d be friends with back at home even.

  Just then Mom came up behind us, pausing on her way back to the cabin. “Keep your eyes peeled for a small orca in particular. Arden says that should be J-50,” she said. “He’s the youngest member of the pod. At least he was last year. He’s the son of J-16. We want to see how he’s kept up with the group this year. He was tagged as well, so we’ll be able to identify him fairly easily.”

  I pressed my binoculars against my eye sockets and stared eagerly at the gray water. I knew I probably wouldn’t be able to see the tag from the boat, but maybe I could still spot a dorsal fin. I stood there for what felt like forever but nothing, nothing, nothing.

  My face was wet from spray, and my hands were growing cramped. I was chilly too, even though it was summer, but I didn’t want to take a break to go into the cabin. I might miss something.

  “A fin!” Olivia shrieked beside me.

  Quickly I focused my binoculars in the direction she was looking. Sure enough, a gray fin was poking up above the water.

  “False alarm,” I said, lowering my binoculars. “It’s a bottlenose dolphin.”

  Cooper looked too. “It looks kind of like a shark to me,” he said.

  “Ah, no,” I said. Cooper looked over at me. “It’s definitely a dolphin.”

  “How do you know?” His tone was faintly challenging.

  “Well, for one thing, the fin is curved. If it was a shark, it would be an exact triangle shape. And for another, you can see the fin swooping up and down. That’s the dolphin swimming. A shark fin would cut straight across the top of the water, because sharks swim differently,” I finished.

  Cooper was staring at me with his mouth slightly open. He shut it abruptly. “Oh,” was all he said.

  Suddenly Mom rushed out from the cabin where she’d been looking at the GPS with the captain. “We just got the updated coordinates,” she said, grabbing her own binoculars and peering through them. “The captain’s going to start heading that direction right now.”

  I quickly turned and stared back at the ocean as if I could will the whale to appear. I wanted to be the first one to spot him. Olivia crowded beside me, looking too.

  “He’ll be with the rest of the pod and his mother,” Mom said. “The other tag in the pod isn’t picking up. But it could just be a technical glitch. Tags can sometimes fall off or stop transmitting.”

  For a few more minutes, we rumbled through the water. Everyone was silent and focused.

  “There!” Cooper exclaimed, pointing. “I see one!”

  I focused as well, and a thrill went through me when I saw the curved black back and tall dorsal fin. A plume of water spray surrounded it. Some Native American tribes called orcas “blackfish,” and I could see why.

  “And the rest of the pod …” Mom’s voice trailed off. She was silent for a minute, searching the water.

  I searched too. But then Mom lowered her binoculars. I was already thinking what she said next: “He’s alone. The rest of the pod’s nowhere to be seen.”

  Chapter 2

  “Where are they? Where is his mother?” Olivia asked.

  We were all clustered at the railing now: Arden, Cooper, Mom, Olivia, and me. At Mom’s request, the captain had idled the boat, and we could clearly see the little orca, diving around us—alone.

  Mom shook her head slowly. “I don’t know. But this isn’t good. Orca mothers never leave their calves, and they would certainly never leave the pod voluntarily.”

  Arden spoke up, looking concerned. “We’ve seen this before, unfortunately. The only time we see an orca calf alone is when the mother has died.”

  “But what about the rest of the pod?” I asked her.

  “Pods never leave calves behind on purpose,” Arden replied. “Since the J34 pod is nowhere to be seen, I can only assume he lost them after his mother died. In the past, when orca calves were captured, the adults would surround the nets and call and call for the babies who were being taken away on boats. The only way this calf would be on his own is by accident.”

  “So he’s all alone?” I asked, looking at the little fin swimming around us. The ocean suddenly seemed very big and very lonely.

  “It looks that way,” Mom said, studying the orca carefully. “Do you see how he’s swimming so close to the boat? Orphaned orcas get lonely. They’ll swim right up and bump against boats as a kind of substitute for other orcas. It’s dangerous to have them get so close. They can get hurt. And people can try to touch or capture them.”

  “What are we going to do?” Cooper asked. I could hear the urgency in his voice.

  “I’m honestly not sure,” Arden said. “Orphans don’t show up that often. It’s a sad fact, but they usually die before humans spot them.”

  “What about the J34 pod?” I said. “If we can find his family, we could reunite them.”

  Mom was focusing her binoculars on the calf again. “We’ll need to pause our search for the time being. We need to concentrate on what do about this little guy first.”

  We watched the little orca breaching in the water—jumping up and splashing back down. He blew a fine spray of water out of the blowhole at the top of his head.

  I knew already that the blowhole was his nose. It was on top instead of in the front of his face, so he could breathe without poking his head out of the water.

  “You see how the area behind his blowhole is sunken?” Arden said, looking closely. “That’s called peanut-head.”

  “What does it mean?” Cooper asked. “Is that bad?”

  Arden looked serious. “It means he’s very, very hungry. Starving, in fact. Orcas store fat behind their blowholes. When the area is sunken like that, it means he’s using up his fat stores.” She focused the binoculars again. We all did the same. “And do you see how his back looks sunken on either side of his spine? That’s another sign he’s very, very thin. Too thin.”

  “Will he be OK?” I asked, leaning over the railing until the metal dug into my stomach. “Hey! Hey, little guy!” I called to him. Turning back to the people on the boat I said, “We should give him a name.”

  “August?” Olivia said. “For the month we found him?”

  “I like that,” I said.

  Mom was only half-listening to the naming discussion we were having. She and Arden exchanged a look. Finally Arden spoke gently, replying to my original question.

  “I’m going to be honest with you kids. If he doesn’t get help he likely won’t be OK,” she said. “Mother orcas teach their babies to hunt. They teach them the culture of the pod. They have their own dialect of the orca language. Orcas are highly social. Without a pod and a mother to teach him, he’ll almost certainly die of starvation and isolation.”

  “No!” Cooper burst out. “We can’t let that happen to August.”

  “And we’re not going to,” Mom reassured us. “But we need to get back to shore and make some calls.” She signaled through the window of the bridge, and the captain turned the boat around.

  “Wait!” Olivia said. “How will we find him again?”

 
“We’ll use the tracker,” Mom said. “Just like before.”

  All the way back to shore, I couldn’t think of anything but that little calf, alone and lost, wondering where his mother is.

  “We have to save him!” I murmured to Olivia. “We just have to!”

  She looked at me with the same distress I was feeling inside. On the other side, Cooper scowled. “We will. I know we will.”

  If only I could feel so sure.

  Chapter 3

  I felt more hopeful when we got back to SJS. We all piled into the shed they used for an office, and Mom and Arden got on the phones. In no time at all, the office had filled up with officials.

  There were two scientists from NOAA—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. I knew that they were kind of like the government representatives for the ocean. Someone from the Washington governor’s office showed up too. There was also a man from San Juan Islands Oceanarium. Cooper explained briefly that it was a big local marine park. I’d heard of it before, but we didn’t have one anywhere near Charleston.

  Arden filled them in on everything we’d seen out on the boat. Then everyone started talking, passing papers back and forth.

  Finally the governor’s rep, a tall man with short, curly hair, spoke up. “So what are you proposing?” he asked.

  Mom shot Arden a look. “We’d like support for a rescue, followed by a short-term rehabilitation and the return of August to his pod,” she said. “We’ll hopefully have located them by the time he’s ready to be released.”

  There was a rustle in the room. I didn’t see anything crazy about what Mom had said, but the other adults were glancing at each other uneasily.

  “You know as well as we do that an orca has never been successfully released back into the wild,” the Oceanarium rep said. “Five years ago, Oceanarium released an orca that had been a part of our shows. He was too comfortable with humans. He kept coming back to us for food and companionship. A year later, he died of pneumonia.”