By KATE POSS

Whidbey resident Susan Berta wears a T-shirt that sums up her mission in life: “Protect the water. Protect the salmon. Protect the orca.”

As co-founder of the Orca Network in 2001 and the Langley Whale Center in 2014 with her husband Howard “Howie” Garrett, Berta’s commitment to whales and the marine environment reflect her admiration of the Salish Sea people’s deep connection with our marine relatives.

It was the capture of Lolita, also known as Tokitae or “Toki,” in 1970 and the campaign for her release from Miami’s Seaquarium that introduced Berta to the orca’s plight, her husband and the Salish Sea people who were heartbroken about the kidnapped orca’s removal from their family.

Tokitae was a baby, perhaps 4 to 6 years old, when her family was driven into Penn Cove with boats, underwater bombs and nets. She was captured and taken to Miami, where she was kept in a small tank and made to perform at the Seaquarium, according to Berta. She died in captivity in 2023 following 53 years’ separation from her southern resident orca family and a decades-long campaign to bring her home.

Berta met Howard Garrett when he “crashed” a presentation she had organized that featured speaker Wallie Funk, then publisher/editor of the Whidbey News-Times. Funk was giving a slide presentation to the Beach Watchers — now Soundwater Stewards — on the orca’s roundup and captures beginning in 1966.

Hugo, one of Toki’s pod members, was taken to the Seaquarium in 1968.

According to Orca Network’s webpage on the capture, Toki and Hugo communicated in their shared language once she arrived: “She was … to be a playmate for the young male orca named Hugo who had been captured in Puget Sound in February 1968. Hugo was from Lolita’s clan, the southern resident community, but no one knew that at the time. For the first several weeks, Hugo was kept in the present manatee tank, about a hundred yards away from Tokitae, because the park managers assumed they would fight. They called constantly to each other with their siren-like calls across the park grounds. Over the next ten years Hugo banged his head against the walls of his tank on many occasions.”

Berta discovered that orcas would become the key to her new life.

“I hadn’t been aware of the captures at the point,” Berta recalled. “Howie stood up and said, ‘One of those whales is alive and needs to be brought back.’ I said I’m in.”

Garrett’s previous experience included 10 years of humpback research on the East Coast, working with his brother Ken at the Center for Whale Research on San Juan Island — he did that in 1981 to 1983, and 1993 to 1997, during which time they started the Toki campaign. He spent two years in Miami, along with members of the Lummi Nation, in an attempt to have Toki returned to her family.

“Howie ended up moving to Miami for two years — talk about a hard sell,” Berta noted. “Every day in Miami was a show. We wanted to get them to understand she had a family. No one knew how whales lived, their social systems, their culture. Howie was a sociologist. He was so good at telling that story. He was decades ahead of his time. They’re now coming around to see the importance of social bonds in animals.”

Berta recalled Tokitae, while she was in captivity, tried speaking in her pod’s dialect but was coerced into using a different language. She saw parallels with indigenous people in the U.S., Canada and Australia, whose culture was squashed when forced into residential schools.

“They would force her to make these siren-like sounds in her shows,” Berta said in a 2024 oral history interview recorded by Judy Lynn for the Island County Historical Museum. “And say that’s what a killer whale sounds like. It was ridiculous. Sometimes she would make sounds like the southern residents, but they would not let her make those in the shows. It’s so weird to me. Why would they do that?”

Berta became acquainted with the Salish Sea indigenous community when Beach Watchers revived the pre-WWII Penn Cove Canoe races in 1992. Previously, native tribes participated in the canoe races and arts and crafts festival. When Berta stepped in, she was the only white woman inviting the tribes to participate once again.

“We wanted to have a water festival to celebrate our water resources and educate about water,” she said. “The arts festival had been bringing back some native crafts and demonstrations for several years, and the museum people were talking about maybe getting the canoe races started again.”

Through her ongoing connections with the tribes, Berta was introduced to a couple who act as advisors with the Orca Network.

The couple founded the Orca Network in 2001 to continue the campaign to bring Toki home and to work on behalf of the southern residents whose population had dropped by 20% over six years. Later, after Toki died in 2023, the Orca Network continued as an ongoing marine life education resource. Its foundation led to the creation of the Langley Whale Center in 2014, which organizes tours, has displays and offers a marine-themed gift shop.

Berta’s practice of recording whale sightings from her Beach Watcher days working at the Admiralty Lighthouse office evolved into the Orca Network’s Whale Sighting Network. Now with 19,000 subscribers, it tracks orca and gray whale movement and behaviors in the Salish Sea. Visitors are invited to post marine mammal viewings and learn from the site and its Facebook presence where they swim each day.

Sounders are a group of a dozen-and-growing Pacific gray whales who detour from their annual migration from Baja Mexico to the Bering Sea. They usually visit from March to May, veering into the North Puget Sound to feast on ghost shrimp.

What is unique about this group is that they discovered a new food source which required swimming from the Pacific Ocean into the Puget Sound, gauging the tides and breaking off from their fellow 25,000 companions en route to the arctic. The first Sounders to forage in Saratoga Passage were “Shackleton” and “Earhart,” a male and female first documented in May 1990. One of the most famous of the Sounders is Patch, first identified in 1991 and known for a giant white patch on his right back, as well as his tendency to linger longer than the others.

Each year Orca Network/Langley Whale Center, along with the City of Langley, host the Welcome the Whales festival and parade. The event is a fundraiser for the Orca Network and is a time to dress up and celebrate the Sounders’ annual return.

Orca Network also is part of the West Coast Stranding Network, which responds to marine mammal strandings and examines reasons why they died. It works in partnership with NOAA, wildlife veterinarians and trained volunteers.

“We’re doing a study of marine mammal brain tissues — a new research project with Children’s Hospital,” Berta said. “All of the studies we do and actually all of what we find out about marine mammals affects human health. We find cancers, toxins, antibiotics resistance and new fungal diseases.”

The current administration’s freeze on grants to NOAA and the Stranding Network that were awarded during the Biden administration has affected the stranding operations and necropsy research. Given the current climate of freezing previously approved federal funding, Berta predicts Orca Network will need to do more fund-raising on its own.

“People have the expectation we will take care of things on the beach,” Berta said. “We do a lot of education.”

To raise funds, the Orca Network offers a cruise at the annual Welcome the Whales festival and a pair of gray whale cruises to Baja each March.

When Berta first heard that mother whales brought their babies up to the boats in Baja, she found it hard to believe it was actually the whales approaching for company. But she experienced a life-changing moment when she was greeted by a mother and her calf who swam up to greet her.

“I remember the first time a mom came up and the baby came up and looked me in the eyes,” Berta said. “I thought, what other species would bring their baby up to strangers and offer it for you to meet? I remember the thrill of that and sitting back and crying. I just get goosebumps thinking about that now. It was life changing. Looking in those big eyes. Every trip I’ve been on since then is the same.”

Berta believes Toki led her to meeting Garrett, becoming involved with protecting the whales and learning to see the world through the indigenous people’s perspective.

“How those whales — I swear they know they’re changing lives — they are getting to people’s hearts and making them think about what they’re doing to the natural world,” Berta said. “We need to care about the whales in the ocean. I’ve learned so much from our native friends, especially through Toki’s death. Their view helps explain so much we see. The things unexplainable by science. I think it’s important to open ourselves up to looking at things in another way.”

To learn more about the Orca Network, visit orcanetwork.org. The Langley Whale Center is open 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Wednesday through Sunday.

Photo by Patrick Sylvester Quiver breaches during a sea lion hunt off Fort Casey State Park.