{"id":1359,"date":"2020-04-26T15:18:01","date_gmt":"2020-04-26T22:18:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orcaseverywhere.com\/home\/?p=1359"},"modified":"2020-04-29T17:58:02","modified_gmt":"2020-04-30T00:58:02","slug":"orca-strations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orcaseverywhere.com\/home\/orca-strations\/","title":{"rendered":"Orca-strations"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was love at first splash when Mark Leiren-Young met Granny, a hundred-year old orca that he wrote about for a documentary and a book.<\/em><\/h3>\n

Everybody knows orcas are awesome and they will steal your heart. They are part of the logo of the Vancouver Canucks and the Royal British Columbia Museum will be launching a major exhibit about orcas in May 2020.<\/p>\n

They are so important that I think it\u2019s now illegal to create a tourism ad for B.C. (or Washington State) that doesn\u2019t feature an orca spy-hopping or soaring above the water in a mind-blowing breach.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

An orca leaping out of the water.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The orcas we know best are the \u201csouthern residents.\u201d These were the first orcas that humans met in captivity\u2026 the orcas that the Canadian government once plotted to exterminate so we wouldn\u2019t have to share salmon with them\u2026<\/p>\n

Orcas used to spend all summer long in the Salish Sea. When I discovered that some people believed that \u201cGranny,\u201d the matriarch of the southern residents, might be over a hundred years-old, I set out to make a movie about her.<\/p>\n

The southern residents were in the middle of a baby boom. The population wasn\u2019t thriving, but it was recovering from the era when we\u2019d wiped them out by shooting them and taken a generation of their children to perform in marine parks.<\/p>\n

Granny had just been elected honorary Mayor of Orcas Island. Almost everyone I interviewed was upbeat, hopeful, optimistic. The moment I saw Granny fly through the air \u2013 like she was ready for her close-up \u2013 the matriarch and her pod owned me.<\/p>\n

Those were ancient times. Justin Trudeau was Canada\u2019s shiny new Prime Minister. Barack Obama was president of the United States. The iPhone seven had just been released. The year was 2016.<\/p>\n

That January, the southern residents lost J55\u2014an orca who died so soon after birth that researchers never confirmed the young whale\u2019s gender or mother. Six more southern residents were gone before the end of the year. The Center for Whale Researchers waited until the start of 2017 to announce the death of Granny.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cOrcas Everywhere\u201d book launch photo with author, Mark Leiren-Young.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

That\u2019s when we realized these orcas were in trouble. I wanted to do what I could to inspire people to fight for them. So, I was thrilled when Ruth Linka, the editorial director at Orca Book Publishers asked if I\u2019d be interested in writing about her company\u2019s namesake for young readers.<\/p>\n

I wanted to share how and why I fell for these whales. I wanted to share stories about how intelligent they are, how they look after each other and what humans can do to help them. I also wanted to write about what humans have done\u2014and are still doing\u2014to destroy them.<\/p>\n

I wanted to write a book that would not only surprise and excite readers who were already into whales, but also inspire readers who\u2019d never really thought about them. Equally important, I wanted to let young readers know what they could do to make a difference.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

One of the most compelling speakers fighting for the southern resident orcas in Washington State is London Fletcher. For the last few years she\u2019s been battling to breach dams in the U.S. to help save the Chinook salmon\u2014the primary food source for the southern residents.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s pretty hard not to dub her the Greta Thunberg of whale conservation.<\/p>\n

London is a member of the Society of Marine Mammology and the Acoustical Society of America. She\u2019s twelve and she has told politicians, the media and the public, \u201cWe just can\u2019t let them go without a fight.\u201d<\/p>\n

But she\u2019s hardly alone.<\/p>\n

Ella Grace from Ontario was eight when she was inspired by eco-warrior Rob Stewart to fight for sharks and the oceans.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Activist Ta\u2019Kaiya Blaney from Sliammon First Nation<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Powell River\u2019s Ta\u2019Kaiya Blaney from Sliammon First Nation was eight when she started speaking out\u2014and singing\u2014about the dangers of a spill from the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always enjoyed writing theatre for young audiences because they\u2019re engaged. They don\u2019t just ask questions, they want and, sometimes demand, answers. So, doing\u00a0Orcas Everywhere<\/em>\u00a0was an offer I couldn\u2019t refuse.<\/p>\n

In a lot of ways, this book was created as Orcas 101\u2014for adults, too\u2014as an all-purpose introduction to these magnificent beings. I want to inspire readers of all ages to join with leaders like London, Ta\u2019Kaiya and Ella to fight on behalf of another species.<\/p>\n

It all starts with love.<\/p>\n

Mark Leiren-Young is also an accomplished dramatist and critic. He hosts the Skaana<\/a> podcast where he interviews experts about orcas, oceans and the environment. Visit www.leiren-young.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was love at first splash when Mark Leiren-Young met Granny, a hundred-year old orca that he wrote about for a documentary and a book. Everybody knows orcas are awesome…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/orcaseverywhere.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/1WyNQbsXGo78WagiiZgipHw1.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcaseverywhere.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcaseverywhere.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcaseverywhere.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcaseverywhere.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcaseverywhere.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1359"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/orcaseverywhere.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1414,"href":"https:\/\/orcaseverywhere.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359\/revisions\/1414"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcaseverywhere.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcaseverywhere.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcaseverywhere.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcaseverywhere.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}