captive orca profiles 75 Ishmael

This is the story of a young orca who was captured in 1968 by the Seattle Aquarium near Seattle, Washington. He was named Ishmael. Ishmael , a young male orca from J or L pod was captured together with about 65 members of his greater family in October 1968 near Yukon Harbor, WA. While most of the whales were released after a while, five young male orcas weren't that lucky. Cuddles, the smallest of the five with 351 cm, was sent the farest. Until 1971 he stayed at Flamingo Land in Yorkshire, Great Britain. Then he was transferred to Dudley Zoo in Worcester, Great Britain. There he died in April 1974. During his whole time in captivity he was all alone by himself. UK hasn't had any dolphinariums since 1990. Mamuk (396 cm and 1,361 kg) was sent to Sea-Arama Marineworld in Galveston, Texas, where he died in June 1974. Since Sea-Arama's other orca, Lil Nooka, had already died in March 1971, the park lost his last orca with Mamuk. Haida (427 cm and 1,452 kg) was sent to Sealand Victoria, BC. In October 1982 he died on a lung infection, one of the most common reasons of death in captivity. Sealand Victoria replaced him by an Icelandic female orca which they also called Haida (Haida 2). The two biggest ones, Ishmael (518 cm and 2,041 kg) and Ahab (died 1974) (579 cm and 2,495 kg), were chosen to join the U.S. Navy in Hawaii. Named after the main characters of Herman Melville's famous "Moby Dick", the two stayed together until 1971 and were used in the U.S. Navy Project Deep Ops. His basic Navy education began on May 24, 1969. Ishmael was trained to return to his station, allow handling, respond to a recall buzzer attached to his backpack, retrieve an inflated ball with an attached ring, swim through a 10 x 10 foot gate, hold his breath and exhale on acoustic command, and follow a nine-foot outboard boat. After basic training ended at Point Mugu in December 1969, Ishmael was transferred to Project Deep Ops in Hawaii to start his deep diving assignment. On 19 February 1971, Ishmael made a dive to 500 feet. On the next trial, he made a shallow dive and returned to the boat. On the third try, he made another shallow dive, spat out the training device in his mouth, and returned to the boat. When he surfaced, Ishmael slapped his large tail flukes on the water (lobtailing) and hit the water with his pectoral fins. After he swam a few hundred yards away from the boat, his trainers decided to stop his lessons for the day. But Ishmael had a different plan. He started swimming toward the channel entrance and never looked back. He refused to respond to radio signals transmitted via his backpack. The Navy sped after him. When last sighted, Ishmael was outside the channel entrance. Despite a search for several days by boat and air, Ishmael was never seen again …at least not by the Navy. — at U.S. Navy.

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