“I wasn’t even born then!” announces a blonde boy from Lori Fujimoto’s third-grade class. The class of restless third-graders is visiting Cornet Bay from Seattle on a field trip to learn about whales and sea life.

Casey Funk listens attentively with his classmates as his grandfather, Wallie Funk, explains what he saw in Penn Cove 37 years ago. Funk, who is known in the area as former editor and publisher of the Whidbey News-Times from 1964 to 1989, took historic photographs of the orca whale capture in 1970 that are now widely regarded as the first such records of the orca whale capture for aquariums.

“There were pens containing whales,” he said. “Some of them inside of the pen and some outside jumping around, and I spent seven hours out there on the pen, photographing them.”

Funk picks up a camera, the same camera that he shot the photographs with in 1970, telling the class, “This was my main weapon,” because his photos would stimulate the public to action.

“How many people did you kill?” querries a curious boy in the back row. Funk explains that by “weapon” he means that he caught and exposed people in the act of stealing whales away from their homes and families. The whales were filled with rocks, tangled in chains, and sunk to the bottom of the cove.

“I began to develop a conscience about it,” Funk admitted, and soon locals and media alike became outraged by the photos. “They’re just like your family,” he explains, “mothers, fathers, little whales.” Some of the kids nod in understanding.

The photos and the killing of several whales were enough to begin the controversy that still surrounds the capture today. Because of such documentation and efforts of people passionate about the plight of orcas, capturing orca whales in Washington State waters is illegal today.

The third-graders were knowledgeable, sharing information about whales that they have studied. “Keiko got freed,” confided one girl, referring to the orca that starred in the movie “Free Willy.” Keiko was captured in 1979 and lived in captivity until his release in July 2002, followed shortly by his death in December 2003. “But he got pneumonia.” This is one of the hazards of reintroducing a captured gentle giant into the wild.

“Does anyone know how many whales there were captured in Penn Cove that day,” asks Mark Funk, Wallie’s son, and father to Casey.

“Seven!”

“Twelve?”

“Two hundred and fifty!”

Wallie tells them 80 whales were captured that day.

Fujimoto’s third-graders know more than the average Whidbey Island resident about the orca capture, quoting names, numbers and dates for Funk. Not only do they know about the controversy, but they are thinking about it.

“I think its sort of bad that they put rocks in the dead whales and let them sink to the bottom of the sea,” expressed Mabel June, who got to hold the camera that Funk used in 1970.

Making this kind of judgement as a student in third-grade appeared to impress Funk as an inspiring start to an education.

“You people are all part of a new generation in preserving energy, greens, wildife,” he said.

Funk presented Mrs. Fujimoto with a baseball cap sporting an orca whale and provided the class with photos and newspaper clippings about the event, but the impression that Funk and the orcas have made on the students will last a lifetime.