Whidbey’s premiere whale watcher shares love of orcas

On a morning plagued by wildfire smoke, Rachel Haight of the Orca Network, a Langley-based nonprofit, received a report of orcas off Ebey’s Landing. Beneath a sepia sky, she ventured off, knowing she had only moments to catch a glimpse of the fleeting pod.

“Sometimes we put out what we want into the universe with the whales,” she said. “They don’t always listen, but we like to talk to them. And you know, sometimes things happen.”

Sitting on the bluff, Haight began speaking to them. “Hey, come hang out here,” she said.

Finally, they emerged — the transients, Bigg’s killer whales. Haight glued her eyes to her binoculars, studying the shape of their dorsal fins. Bigg’s don’t usually come this far east in the Salish Sea, she said. They typically stay near Vancouver Island.

Immediately, she recognized the family, T190A. At that time, there were seven members, some of which went on to become the stuff of legend.

Soon, sightings like this may increase on Whidbey Island. This time of year, southern resident killer whales head south in the Salish Sea, following the salmon run. Haight, an Oak Harbor resident, joined the network as a volunteer in 2012 and now coordinating sightings of the giant marine mammals throughout the region is her full-time job.

Earlier this year, T109A3 or Spong entered a shallow lagoon with her calf near Zeballos, British Columbia, likely hunting seals. The two became stuck on a gravel bar, and the mother drowned with the rising tide, leaving the calf stranded.

Ehattesaht-Chinehkint First Nation leaders named the stranded calf kwiisaḥi?is, meaning “Brave Little Hunter.” kwiisaḥi?is, or T109A3A, remained, eating birds but dropping some weight. After about a month, she wriggled free of the lagoon into the sea toward her pod.

There she was, Brave Little Hunter, playing with another calf, before Haight. The pod stayed in the area playing in the kelp for about an hour, she said.

Soon, a crowd emerged on the bluff, cheering for the orcas.

From Ebey, the pod moved onto Port Susan the next day, then made its way up Saratoga Passage on day three. When it made it through Deception Pass, Haight was there too, waiting.

The pod kept on, swimming along West Beach. Haight followed it there too.

“I’m hoping Brave Little Hunter, I’m hoping that she does survive,” she said. “I was absolutely devastated when I learned it was her and her mom in that lagoon. It was just really, really sad to hear it. Everybody has a favorite whale or favorite family and that little calf was definitely my little favorite.”

Though she said orcas are just part of the thrill. People gather from all over to see them. Throughout the day, strangers become friends, and it’s about the adventure.

“Meeting people on the shore who were seeing them for the first time was always the best reward anyone could hope for,” said Orca Network co-founder Susan Berta. “Seeing the delight and joy, and knowing you had helped someone else feel that special feeling we get in our hearts, and knowing that person will be forever changed – and that person will then care about the orcas and about their habitat, and their need for salmon. And that’s where our education and other programs come in.”

The Orca Network was founded by Berta and Howard Garrett in 2001, merging their experience as founding members of the Tokitae Foundation and the Sound Water Stewards of Island County.

Berta was working as program coordinator for Island County WSU Beach Watchers, which went on to become the Sound Water Stewards, at Admiralty Head Lighthouse five years prior to the Orca Network, watching orcas swim by late fall, early winter. She started an email list to let orca enthusiasts know when they were in the area. She became involved in Garrett’s campaign to bring home Tokitae, a captive female southern resident orca held at the Miami Sequarium in Florida. By 2001, the Orca Network was founded primarily as a tool to bring Tokitae home but continued to grow and expand over the decades.

For Berta, the sighting network has always been the core of the organization.

“Being from Wyoming, I always loved the large wildlife there, and the thrill of seeing a moose or a bear in the wild was always such a gift,” she said. “Here on Whidbey, seeing a whale is even more special, because we only catch a glimpse of their lives above the water as they surface to breathe or breach.”

What Berta couldn’t anticipate was how much the sighting network would grow, what a community it would create, how much data it would amass, and how much it would help researchers and agencies working to recover endangered southern resident orcas, she said. When the network started, the southern resident orca population was increasing and nearly to 100. Now they are down to 74 members.

“It all really just came about because of how I felt when I saw the whales, and how much they helped me, and I wanted to help the whales, and help other people experience that same joy, and because I knew they too would want to help the orcas once they saw them,” she said.

Orcas are the reason Haight made the jump from Nebraska in 2011. She said she belongs to the “Free Willy generation.” Who would have thought, when the 1993 movie came out, it would pave Haight’s future?

“(Haight is) an incredible photographer as well as being one of our co-coordinators of our Whale Sighting Network team, and probably the most dedicated person I have known who gets out there to watch the whales on Whidbey ever,” Berta said.

Seeing orcas is less about location and more about timing, Haight said. She started by sitting on a bluff for three hours every day in hopes that they may pass by. Go somewhere with a high up view, like Fort Ebey or Fort Casey, but it can happen at any beach. Binoculars are a must.

Following Orca Network on Facebook helps. Watchers post real-time sightings which show which direction the orcas are headed. From there, go to the beach ahead of them and wait for them to come.

“These amazing encounters are just kind of a result of just many hours being there sitting and then it just happens,” Haight said. “It is pretty rare.”

The longer someone searches, the more they will be able to recognize patterns, she said.

“I like to say (orcas are) very unpredictable, but they’re also predictable, so sometimes they get into rhythms or patterns you can kind of just predict and take guesses and just have a hunch on where they are.”

Many people feel a strange connection with orcas, she said.

“The way they work together as a family, there’s something mystical about them,” she said. “They live under the water, so there’s lots of things we’re never ever going to know. There’s just something that draws me to them and countless other people.”

The Orca Network has provided a window to the orcas for people.

“Countless people have cried,” she said. “They burst into tears. They’re overwhelmed with emotion. People travel from all over the world to see these animals.”

People protect what they love, Haight said. Orca Network provides people a pathway to fall in love with orcas.

“The reactions, the cheers, the screams, the happiness, the tears. When people see them, they fall in love with them, and it makes them want to protect them,” she said.

There is something impressive about the orcas’ size in person, she said. Even if they can’t be seen, listening to the sound of their blows as they pass in the night can give the same feeling.

“There’s a connection with nature that they give you,” she said. “I mean that sound of a blow, it’s like Earth breathing. It’s like a mystical kind of thing, the way they move through the water, the way they can be silent, the way they work together, I think there’s just something awe-inspiring about that. It just captures something that I don’t know how to quite put into words.”

Haight recognizes individual orcas based on photo references comparing shapes, nicks and notches on dorsal fins as well as features in their saddle patch or eye patch. She’s also started using Finwave, an AI-assisted tool to identify orcas and track encounters. As this technology develops, it will be more readily accessible to the public.

Whidbey is unique in this community-led effort that’s grown over the decades. Connecting with orcas helps whale watchers connect with each other.

“One of my best friends here, I met her running around chasing whales,” she said. “It’s hard to see our differences because we’re so focused on all the things we love, which is the community of being out there with the whales.”

In 2020, Haight was sitting on a dock in Holmes Harbor playing the soundtrack to “Moana.” She had heard orcas had been spotted in the area, but she was limited to where she could be with all the private property.

Then, an enormous fin broke the water’s surface right next to the dock.

“I could have touched it, and I kind of went into shock for a second. Like, is this really happening?” she said.

Then, another emerged on the other side of the dock.

“I’m quite sure I could have literally touched them,” she said. “You can see every wake mark, every scratch, every detail on their skin.”

Eventually, two guys came up next to her, and the mother orca slapped the water with her tail three times, just two feet away from them, and they went running.

“Was the orca just trying to slap the seal? Was she messing with the people? I don’t know,” Haight said. “It was pretty comical.”

Haight doesn’t like to say the whales are ever “putting on a show,” she said, even if it seems that way. They’re just doing “their whale thing,” and sometimes people are lucky enough to take witness.

Wild orcas have never intentionally harmed a human being. A series of boat attacks in Europe in recent years have spun narratives about orcas organizing against humans. Haight said this is likely a big misunderstanding.

“They’re powerful animals that may cause destruction, but they love to play with crab pot lines. We don’t like it as we’re afraid they can get entangled in them, but you can often watch several orcas drag crab pots around and play with them. There’s nothing to really be gained, and doing it just seems to be something they’re doing because they like to interact with it.”

Like many animals, orcas are curious about sounds and smells and interact physically.

People see footage of orcas hunting big mammals and sometimes think of them as cold-blooded killers, but they are more complex than that. Haight points to Tumbo, or T2C2, an orca with scoliosis who couldn’t hunt on his own but was able to live to the age of 15 because his family was taking care of him.

Lots has changed with the orcas since the network first started, Berta said. Transient or Bigg’s orcas are here year-round now, whereas a few decades ago they were rarely inland Puget Sound. Today their population is thriving. They travel in much bigger pods and linger in the San Juans, inland Puget Sound and all around Whidbey. They have plenty of prey as opposed to the preferred prey of the southern resident population.

What started as an idea for a way to share sightings so others could have the joy of seeing orcas, has turned into something that has collected valuable data and real time sightings by researchers, agencies, the Navy, shipping traffic and by those doing on the water construction to protect and save the southern resident orcas, Berta said.

“It is such a win-win-win,” she said. “It helps the whales, it helps those working to save the whales, and it helps give people a tangible way to do something to help the whales, while also learning about them and at the same time getting that feeling of love and joy while watching the whales with others in this orca dork community.”

Thousands of citizen scientists turn in reports of sightings, and the staff works to confirm, identify and verify each sighting for useable data that spans decades, Berta said. Ultimately, it all started from a feeling.

“I always feel all is right with the world after I have had the gift of being able to watch these amazing, beautiful beings swim past our shorelines,” she said.

Later this month, Orca Network is partnering with Northwest Straits Foundation, Whidbey Island Conservation District, Island County Marine Resources Committee and Sound Water Stewards for Orca Recovery Day. On Oct. 19, visit Cornet Bay from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. for stewardship demonstrations, nature walks and restoration work.