Sam Lipman, 32, & Ken Balcomb, 82, devoted their lives to whales

Sam Lipman (left) & Ken Balcomb (right).
(Beth Clifton collage)

Balcomb spent more than 50 years in the cause,  Lipman just 15,  but both left a mark

            FRIDAY HARBOR, Washington; CRAWLEY, West Sussex, U.K.––Self-described “orcaholics” Samantha “Sam” Lipman,  32,  and Ken Balcomb,  82,  half a world and 50 years apart,  died on November 29,  2022 and December 15,  2022,  respectively,  after having between them been in the middle of practically every orca-related controversy since the mid-1970s.

Balcomb was long since legendary,  but Lipman,  at barely two weeks short of celebrating her 33rd birthday,  was well on her way to legendary status when found dead of as yet undetermined causes.

Sam Lipman.  (Facebook photo)

Lipman was inspired by Free Willy!

“Sam’s passion for orcas was first ignited when she watched the movie Free Willy,”  recalled the web page for Orca Aware,  an organization Lipman herself founded in 2012.

“She had worked with British Divers Marine Life Rescue since 2007 as a medic,  course instructor,  and out-of-hours coordinator.  She was formerly part of the head office staff and in 2018 was appointed Thames region coordinator.  Her first task was assessing a lone beluga whale” who appeared in the Thames in September 2018 and was promptly nicknamed Bennie.

“Since 2009,  Sam worked in the field of captive cetacean welfare,”  Orca Aware continued.  “She led the literature search on orcas for the Non-Human Rights Project.  Sam previously held the positions of communications chair for the World Cetacean Alliance and chair of the Dolphinaria-Free Europe coalition.

Sam Lipman.  (Facebook photo)

Free Morgan!

“Sam also volunteered with the Orca Research Trust and Free Morgan Foundation,”  Orca Aware mentioned,  the latter an organization founded to seek the release of an orca kept at Loro Parque on Tenerife in the Canary Islands of Spain.

Lipman in the latter capacity in April 2016 authored “Orca Morgan Smashes Her Head…and Loro Parque Says This is Normal,”  a widely posted,  printed,  reposted,  and reprinted essay opening,

“The lyrics from Avicii’s ‘Waiting for Love’ can be heard playing over the Orca Ocean stadium speakers at Loro Parque as a young orca bashes her head,  over and over again,  off the gates of her tiny tank. The song is loud,  but not loud enough to drown out the sound of skull smashing off of metal or the orca’s frantic screeches.

“Loro Parque currently has six orcas, five of which are on loan from SeaWorld,  USA.  As such,  they are included in SeaWorld’s recent decision to ban its orcas from breeding,”  Lipman explained.

Sam Lipman and friends.
(Beth Clifton collage)

“Found swimming alone & emaciated”

“The sixth orca,  Morgan,  was born in the wild.  In June 2010 she was found swimming alone and emaciated off the Dutch coast and taken to the Dolfinarium Harderwijk in the Netherlands for rehabilitation and release.  Instead of being returned back to her native Norwegian waters, Morgan was sent to Loro Parque.

“Why Morgan was locked inside Loro Parque’s smallest orca tank has not been disclosed,  but Loro Parque has claimed that ‘all we see [in the video] is that Morgan wants to open the door to… be with Tekoa,’  one of the original captive-born orcas transported from SeaWorld to Loro Parque in 2006.

“Unrest between Loro Parque and SeaWorld may have factored into Loro Parque’s decision,”  Lipman suggested.  “The Spanish entertainment park opposes SeaWorld’s decision to end the orca breeding program,  claiming that the “permanent prevention of the reproduction of wild animals under human care is an action that goes against the very cycle of life and well-being of the animals.’

Sam Lipman. (Facebook photo)

Keeping animals captive also “goes against the cycle of life”

“Despite this statement,”  Lipman charged,  “Loro Parque does not appear to consider that the permanent prevention of the freedom and choice of the wild animals under its human care is an action that also goes against the very cycle of life and well-being of the animals – that the orcas have other needs and those needs are frustrated in captivity.”

Morgan remains at Loro Parque.  She birthed an infant in September 2018,  who died in August 2021.

Lipman’s experience with Morgan contributed to her observation in another essay,  “The Grey of Mental Wellbeing – Of Orcas and Men,”  that “Poor mental welfare arises from a lack of biological needs being met.  Whether they be physical,  mental,  or emotional.  When these needs are not met,  it can and inevitably does over long-term periods, lead to suffering;  to a disruption of inner peace;  a change in behavior;  even physical self-harm and suicidal ideation.”

Sam Lipman.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Began with internships

Lipman while an undergraduate at Durham University did month-long internships with the Orca Foundation in South Africa and the Orca Research Trust in New Zealand.

Completing a bachelor of science degree in zoology ad animal biology in 2012,  Lipman taught English and drama from July 2010 to September 2015 with the TheaterSPASS program in Germany,  earned a postgraduate diploma in International Animal Welfare,  Ethics & Law from the University of Edinburgh in 2017,  and in 2020 added a second bachelor of science in paramedic work,  having worked since 2015 for the South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust,  overlapping four years and four months as a dispatcher/call coordinator for the London Ambulance Service.

Lipman was “currently researching her dissertation to top up to  MSc,  focusing her thesis on cetacean welfare assessment protocols,”  her Orca Aware biographical web page said.

Sam Lipman.  (Facebook photo)

“Many happy times on Orca Watch surveys”

“I met Sam many years ago,  and remember many happy times we shared whilst in the north of Scotland on annual Orca Watch surveys.  I also worked closely with her within the Dolphinaria-Free Europe coalition,”  memorialized Marine Connection director Margaux Dodds.

“We at Marine Connection will remember Sam with much love,  affection,  and admiration for everything she achieved in her life.  Gone too soon,  she was an inspirational,  funny,  warm person. I have lost a personal friend and valued colleague,  someone impossible to replace.”

From the orcas – thank you Sam, may you rest in peace.”

[A memorial page for Sam Lipman is here: https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/samlipman?success=true.]

Ken Balcomb.  (Facebook photo)

Balcomb:  from desert to the sea

Ken Balcomb,  founder of the Center for Whale Research,  died in Friday Harbor,  Washington,  his home of 46 years.

Born on November 11,  1940 in Clovis,  New Mexico,  almost on the Texas border and nearly 1,000 miles from the Pacific Ocean,  Balcomb spent his early years in Albuquerque,  relocating with his family to Carmichael,  California,  at age 11.

“After school and on weekends in Carmichael, he worked as care-taker of injured wildlife at a rehabilitation center and as a veterinary assistant at an animal hospital,”  a 2010 biography published by the journal Aquatic Mammals mentioned.

Aldo Leopold.

Inspired by the son of Aldo Leopold

“After graduating from American River College in 1960,  he went to the University of California at Berkeley where he enrolled as a philosophy major in preparation for law school.  In his senior year,  however,  he took a fish and wildlife management course taught by Paul Needham and A. Starker Leopold, the son of pioneering  ecologist Aldo Leopold,  that rekindled his passion for working with animals.  Ken immediately changed his major to zoology and transferred to the Davis campus of the University of California,  from which he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in zoology in 1963.

“For the next two years,  he took a few graduate courses,”  the Aquatic Mammals biography recounted,  “but mostly worked at sea” for the U.S. Department of Interior,  Bureau of Commercial Fisheries,  Marine Mammal Laboratory.  At sea,  Balcomb tagged whales in the eastern North Pacific ocean;  on land,  he collected tissue samples at the Richmond whaling station on San Francisco Bay,  closed in 1972.

(Beth Clifton collage)

From banding sea birds to flying for the Navy

Transferring to the Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program of the U.S. National Museum,  Balcomb spent 1966 banding and studying seabirds in the central North Pacific.

Enlisting in the U.S. Navy to become a pilot,  at the height of the Vietnam War,  Balcomb spent five years flying,  took a two-year leave of absence to begin work on an eventual Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Cruz,  then completed a second two-year Navy hitch tracking whales and helping the Navy to develop an integrated sound surveillance system.

Also teaching military oceanography and acoustics for the Navy in Japan,  Balcomb took the opportunity to visit the Honshu and Hokkaido whaling stations,  and researched Baird’s beaked whales,  publishing his findings as his Ph.D. thesis in 1989.

Orcas in Coupeville, Washington.
(Beth Clifton photo)

Photo ID of Puget Sound orcas

Upon leaving the Navy,  Balcomb was hired by the National Marine Fisheries Service in 1976 to do a photo identification study of orca whales in Puget Sound,  following up research begun by Mike Biggs (1939-1990).

Balcomb began just one month after the last capture of orcas on Puget Sound for display at marine mammal parks,  at Budd Inlet near Olympia,  within sight of the Washington state capitol.  Altogether,  between 1962 and 1976,  272 orcas were taken out of Puget Sound alive.  Twelve died during capture attempts;  fifty were sold to marine mammal parks.  The rest were released.

This followed a decade or more during which orcas were considered a threat to the commercial salmon fishing industry and were routinely bombed and strafed by Navy fliers for target practice.

The orca population has remained critically endangered ever since.

The former orca capture dock at Penn Cove,  Washington, built in 1964 and still used by a shellfish farm.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Low-rider Chevy upset the Whale Museum

Following his first research stint on Puget Sound,  Balcomb studied bowhead whales for the National Marine Fisheries Service in the Bering, Beaufort, and Chuckchi Seas of Alaska;  did whale population research on the west coast of Greenland for the government of Denmark in 1982 and 1983;  and in 1985-1986 did research in the Antarctic for the International Whaling Commission.

By then Balcomb had returned to Puget Sound to briefly head the Whale Museum in Friday Harbor before,  reputedly,  his 1962 low-rider Chevy offended the board of directors into firing him.

Balcomb then started the Center for Whale Research a short distance away.

Wrote KING-5 executive digital producer Allison Sundell,  “As the southern resident orca population came under threat from a decline in food,  pollution and boat noise,  Balcomb became a loud voice for conservation and protection of the population.”

Ken Balcomb. (Facebook photo)

“Not going to count them to zero”

Explained Balcomb,  “I’m not going to count them to zero,  at least not quietly.”

Balcomb became involved in the long-running Free Willy!/Keiko saga soon after the 1993 release of the hit film Free Willy!,  starring Keiko,  an orca captured off Iceland in 1979,  sold to Marineland of Canada in 1982,  and transferred in 1985 to the El Nuevo Reino Aventura aquarium in Mexico City in alleged violation of international treaties.

“The owners of Keiko,  El Nuevo Reino Aventura,  had been trying to get assistance from the Association of Marine Mammal Parks & Aquariums and some of its individual members for over two years,”  Whale & Dolphin Conservation Society campaigns manager Chris Stroud frustratedly recounted in December 1993.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Investigated rehab site in Iceland

While SeaWorld was negotiating behind the scenes to acquire Keiko,  Stroud said,  “a coalition of environmental and cetacean groups finally arranged for a veterinarian to go and visit Keiko and make recommendations for his future.

“Based on the vet’s report,  the groups suggested a two-year-plus rehabilitation and possible release program to Keiko’s owners,  which they accepted as the best possible future for him.

“As part of that agreement,  the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society and a team of specialists headed by Ken Balcomb visited Iceland to discuss the possibility of carrying out the scientific studies that would be necessary before any such release could take place.”

Howard Garrett & Ken Balcomb.
(Alisa Schulman-Janiger Facebook photo)

“Deal?  What deal?”

Balcomb and his half-brother Howard Garrett in August 1993 claimed to have reached a verbal agreement with El Nuevo Reino Aventura to acquire Keiko for rehabilitation on Puget Sound.

El Nuevo Reino Aventura denied having agreed to any such deal.

SeaWorld meanwhile finalized a tentative deal to buy Keiko,  who had long suffered from a chronic skin condition acquired at Marineland of Canada,  conditional on the skin condition being cured.

When El Nuevo Reino Aventura could not cure the skin condition,  SeaWorld withdrew from involvement rather than risk having Keiko infect other orcas at the SeaWorld facilities.

Keiko was instead moved to the Oregon Coast Aquarium in 1996,  then to Iceland in 1998,   was released in 2002,  and died in 2003,  having never become fully self-sufficient as a wild whale.

Images of Granny.

Lolita & Granny

Balcomb and Garrett,  forming the advocacy group Orca Network in 1995,  turned their attention to trying to acquire the orca Lolita from the Miami Seaquarium.  They hoped to return Lolita,  the last surviving orca captured on Puget Sound,  back to the Sound for reunion with L-pod,  her original family.

As of 1995,  there were still several L-pod members who might have known Lolita before her capture in 1970.  Balcomb declared the last of those orcas,  Granny,  deceased on January 2,  2017,  41 years after he first identified her.

(See Granny, the oldest known wild whale, missing & declared dead.)

(Beth Clifton collage)

Lolita remains in Miami

Orca Network offered $1 million for Lolita in 1996.  The Miami Seaquarium turned that offer down,  as well as a quieter offer of $1 million-plus a few years later from the Free Willy/Keiko Foundation.

Lolita,  in reportedly fragile health,  remains at the Miami Seaquarium.  The only orca to live longer in captivity is Corky II,  at SeaWorld San Diego,  captured from A-pod off the British Columbia coast in 1969.

(See Could Lolita, permanently off exhibit, outlive the Miami Seaquarium itself?)

Balcomb in January 2000 identified the K and L pods in Monterey Bay,  California,  the first time they were known to migrate that far south.   in January 2000.

“I’m delighted that they’ll go where food is available,”  Balcomb told media.  “They’re not going to sit here and starve and wash up on our shores.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Sixteen hours of sonar

Soon thereafter,  in March 2000,  Balcomb and his wife Diane Claridge were in the Bahamas managing the Bahamas Marine Mammal Survey on the island of Abaco when U.S. Navy vessels emitted 16 hours of low-frequency sonar signals within a 36-hour interval.

Sixteen small-toothed whales and a spotted dolphin stranded themselves within yards of the Bahamas Marine Mammal Survey during the next 24 hours.

Balcomb and Claridge,  strongly critical of the suspected effects on whales of the U.S. Navy’s SURTASS-LFA sonar program since 1999,  recognized immediately what they were seeing.  They cut the heads off of two dead whales,  stored them in a restaurant freezer,  and flew with the heads to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute on Cape Cod,  where the heads were studied by CAT scan before decomposition destroyed the evidence of sound-induced internal trauma.

Ken Balcomb at the Friday Harbor 4th of July parade 2005.
(Orca Behavior Institute Facebook photo)

“Did scans all night”

“We got there at 11 p.m. and did scans all night, “  Balcomb said.  “By 3 a.m. the damage was evident.”

Agreed National Marine Fisheries Service accoustical research chief Roger Gentry,  “There is no question that tactical mid-range sonars were the sound source that caused the trauma.”

Two years later a joint report by the U.S. Navy and National Marine Fisheries Service confirmed that Navy sonar exercises had caused the whale deaths.

Nonetheless,  on May 5 ,  2003 the destroyer USS Shoup conducted a five-hour sonar test in the Haro Straight,  between the San Juan Islands and Vancouver Island,  almost in sight of the Center for Whale Research.

Recovering three dead porpoises afterward,  Ken Balcomb privately obtained his own CAT scan of the remains of one of them.   Balcomb reportedly found “hemorrhagic trauma that could be due to  the sonar exercise.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Hearing loss is irrelevant if they’re dead”

“I was in the Navy, and I know that sonar is one way to defend ourselves,”  Balcomb told Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter M.L. Lyke.  “But practice does not have to happen in our own front yard,  our own orca sanctuary.”

Again a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report issued two years later concluded that sonar might have affected the whales,  but argued that the sonar sound blasts were not great enough to have caused the whales any lasting hearing loss.

“The thing that gripes me about this whole subject,” responded Balcomb,  “is that the argument has been drafted in the form of whether there is hearing damage.

“It’s like it’s an industrial job problem,  disregarding the observed fact that these animals are fleeing from sources of sound.  They are trying to get away,  and they are stranding and dying.  It is irrelevant whether they had hearing loss if they are dead.”

Springer.  (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration photo)

Springer

Balcomb was much happier with the outcome of the January 2002 rescue of a two-year-old female orca named Springer.

“First seen near the Vashon ferry dock in January 2002,”  recounted Seattle Times staff reporter Lynda V. Mapes,  “she had bad skin,  worms in her stool,  and bad breath.  She also appeared lonely and was hanging around ferries and small boats,  looking for attention.”

Said Balcomb,  “I could move my hand in a circle,  and she would roll over.  It was amazing.  It was like she was auditioning for SeaWorld.  I’d splash water, and she would spit and splash back. She wanted to interact.  She had nothing else to do down there,  and people were her entertainment.”

Rehabilitated at a holding pen off Manchester in Kitsap County,  Washington,  Springer was reunited with her pod,  eventually birthed two young,  and at last report remained alive and well.

San Diego SeaWorld.
(Facebook photo)

“Too much hugging”

“No doubt the perception of these whales has changed from something to
be feared and destroyed to something to be hugged,”  Balcomb told Peggy Anderson of Associated Press in April 2006.  “And now along comes too much hugging,”  or more specifically,  too many people following the 70-odd remaining orcas on Puget Sound in noisy boats,  disrupting their feeding by trying to get close-up views and photographs.

“At his San Juan Island home,  perched above Haro Strait,”  wrote Mapes two months later,   Balcomb keeps in a box the bones of a baby orca whose body washed up on the beach.  The baby was killed in 1970 during a capture attempt,  her body slit and filled with rocks and wrapped in chains in an attempt to hide the slaying.  It’s a reminder,  Balcomb says, of how tough these mammals have had it.

“Balcomb says more profound changes are needed than restricting boat traffic to bring the orca back from the brink of extinction,”  Mapes reported.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“We have an endangered whale eating a threatened fish”

“We have a whole Puget Sound basin full of PCBs,  raw sewage pouring out of Canada,”  Balcomb told Mapes.  “The fish stocks are pretty meager,  and there’s still deforestation and dams destroying habitat. What’s called for is looking at the big picture. We have an endangered whale eating a threatened fish.  We have to change our ways.  I hope this is part of the wake-up.”

That was before the catastrophic loss of seven orcas from the Puget Sound population in 2008.

“It was a bad salmon year and that’s not good for the whales,”  Balcomb assessed.  “Everybody considers these wonderful creatures, but we really have to pay attention to the food supply.”

Tagging:  “I don’t believe the injury to the animals is warranted”

Despite having built his career as a marine scientist on his skill at whale-tagging,  Balcomb by January 2012 had become outspokenly critical of the practice.

“I don’t believe the injury to the animals is warranted,”  Balcomb, told Phuong Le of Associated Press.  “It’s an injurious process. It sticks barbs in the whales that are serious attachment devices that do cause injury and can potentially become infected.  If you take the diameter of a golf ball, that’s the spread of tissue damage from each of two barbs. These will heal over time if they don’t get infected,”  but “some of the barbs don’t come out.”

“I applaud anything that helps (the orcas) through the short term,”  Balcomb added,  “but the long term is what we really have to look at — and that’s the restoration of wild salmon stocks throughout Washington state.”

(See NOAA suspends satellite-tagging orcas after death of whale L95.)

Orcas.  (David Ellifrit, NOAA)

“Two guys are doing all the work”

            A month later,  in April 2018,  Balcomb disclosed DNA research findings indicating,  as Mapes reported,  that “Just two male whales fathered more than half the calves born since 1990 in the population of southern-resident killer whales,  a sign of inbreeding.”

“It was a shocker to find out two guys are doing all of the work,”  Balcomb said.

The plight of orcas was further dramatized when later in 2018 Tahlequah,  whale #35 of J-pod,  carried the remains of her stillborn daughter for more than 1,000 miles around Puget Sound,  over more than 17 days 17+ days (1000+ miles).

Washington governor Jay Inslee convened a task force,  including Balcomb as a member,  to recommend steps to save the declining southern resident orcas.

But Balcomb vocally dissented from the task force recommendations.

(Beth Clifton photo)

“Blatant & ill-informed political manipulation”

Summarized Humane Society of the U.S. president Kitty Block of Balcomb’s response,  and hers,  “To our disappointment,  there was an immediate focus on halting whale watching and pursuing Congressional action to kill seals and sea lions who also eat salmon.  The task force decided to put off actions that most conservation groups and environmentalists agree can actually work, like closing some of the outdated and unused dams that block upstream passage for salmon.”

Balcomb declared himself “embarrassed for the conveners and participants of Orca Task Force, who had to endure blatant and ill-informed political manipulation of a process launched with the good intention of doing something bold to help recover the southern resident killer whales.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Honesty was crushed by politics and vested interests,”  Balcomb said,  “even within agencies whose responsibility it is to manage natural resources sustainably.”

(See Hidden Beach: why grey whales feast while orcas starve and Exploiting starving orcas to push a boondoggle.)

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