Communication as Environmental Resource: An Ethnographic Exploration of Endangered Whale Watching and Human-Nature Relations.

Transcription

1 Communication as Environmental Resource: An Ethnographic Exploration of Endangered Whale Watching and Human-Nature Relations Tema Milstein A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2007 Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Department of Communication

2 University of Washington Graduate School This is to certify that I have examined this copy of a doctoral dissertation by Tema Milstein and have found that it is complete and satisfactory in all respects, and that any and all revisions required by the final examining committee have been made. Chair of the Supervisory Committee Gerry Philipsen Reading Committee: Gerry Philipsen Crispin Thurlow John Palka Date:

3 In presenting this dissertation in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the doctoral degree at the University of Washington, I agree that the Library shall make its copies freely available for inspection. I further agree that extensive copying of the dissertation is allowable only for scholarly purposes, consistent with fair use as prescribed in the U.S. Copyright Law. Requests for copying or reproduction of this dissertation may be referred to ProQuest Information and Learning, 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI , , to whom the author has granted the right to reproduce and sell (a) copies of the manuscript in microform and/or (b) printed copies of the manuscript made from microform. Signature Date

4 University of Washington Abstract Communication as Environmental Resource: An Ethnographic Exploration of Endangered Whale Watching and Human-Nature Relations Tema Milstein Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Gerry Philipsen Department of Communication This study is part of a larger conversation within environmental communication and interdisciplinary circles that assumes that, though nature is alive and material, human perceptions and practices of nature are mediated by social-symbolic processes, or communication. I explore communication in the highest concentration of whale watch tourism operations in the world, the activity that spans the western U.S.-Canada border and revolves around a community of endangered orcas who have played a central role in contemporary human-nature relations. The core research question is: In such an evocative nature-human focal point where people seek out an iconic aspect of nature, what are some of the ways communication mediates human relations with nature? In using the concept of mediates as an analytic lens, the study explores communication both as a culturally constructive force used in negotiating and producing meaning, and as a form of environmental co-presence, of humans and nature in forms of conversation. After describing the case study and the ethnographic methods, I explore how scholars have theorized communication as a mediating force in social, cultural, and environmental processes, as well as specifically in nature tourism settings. The study s findings are organized into three over-arching themes: 1) the two-pronged theme that, in relating to nature, the absence of words is often meaningful, and the

5 contrasting notion that there also is a need to verbally communicate about nature; 2) the key symbol of show, its prevalent use among a wide range of participants in communication about nature (e.g., It s a show ), its network of themes, and its alternatives; and 3) the uses and meanings of discursive labels for whales as they related to transformations in perception, communication, practice, and policy about humannature relations. The theses that emerged from these themes included: 1) First, the absence of verbal was instrumental in knowing nature in different ways. Second, moments of silence were characterized as moments of embodied mediation that were nature-sourced, in which nature was interactive and, at times, spoke. Third, there was an identified lack of publicly available symbols, or culturally shared words, vocabulary, or language to verbally mediate human-nature relations in meaningful or adequate ways. Fourth, despite silence being meaningful and the available words being inadequate, participants spoke of a need to verbally communicate with others. I put forth the notion that the paradox of the absence of words and the need to verbally communicate provided a foundational backdrop for the following theses about the prevalent use of one particular verbal symbol to express the experience of encountering whales and the strategic and meaningful uses of specific forms of discursive labeling for whales. 2) The former thesis in part addressed how participants describing human-nature relations at times rejected culturally available words, yet at the same time felt the need to verbally communicate about their experiences with nature. In the second thesis, I investigate the emergence of one term in particular within this communication, a term that had wide cultural acceptance, was used by a wide range of participants, and which I identified as metaphoric. A range of speakers predominant use of show to describe experiences or moments with whales pointed to the deep cultural coherence of this metaphor. In identifying show as a metaphor, I also explore its cultural resonance and ramifications. 3) An exploration of the ways people discursively labeled whales in the forms of whale identification, whale naming, being bilingual, and whale terms, resulted in certain notions about the power of these labels to mediate human-nature relations. This final thesis included three notions in particular: First, human-whale relations and communication changed in relation to the introduction of the act of identifying and

6 naming whales, and also transformed in relation to a movement that changed popular nominal terms for the whales; second, particular participant choices among alphanumeric terms and names, as well as among nominal and pronominal terms, had social and human-whale relational significance; and, third, certain terms for whales emerged as ideologically dominant. Informed by this study, I offer a preliminary heuristic framework for considering communication as a mediating force, that of communication as a possibly regenerative environmental resource for human-nature relations. Finally, I discuss study limitations and future research, as well as implications for practice.

7 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures... v Chapter 1: Introduction... 1 Research Question... 3 Structure of Dissertation... 3 Chapter 2: Site and Methods... 7 The Site... 7 The Whale Watching Industry... 8 Enviro-Social Context: Whales, Transboundaried Waters, and Humans Historical Area Human-Orca Relations Contemporary Area Human-Orca Relations Endangered Species Regulations and Unfolding Human-Orca Relations Method: Ethnography Data Collection Core Fieldnote Collection Sites Fieldnote Acquisition Participants Analysis In Sum Chapter 3: Literature Review The Meaning of Mediate Communication and Socio-Cultural Relations Communication and Human-Nature Relations Nature and Communication Heuristic Frameworks Normative Tenets and Touchstones Nature Tourism and Communication Sensing and Vision in Nature Tourism Human-Animal Relations and Tourism i

8 Whale Tourism In Sum Chapter 4: An Absence of Words and a Need to Communicate An Absence of Words: Silence In Sum An Absence of Words: There Are No Words In Sum A Need to Communicate This Insatiable Desire to Point at and Name Things I Just Had To Tell You!: Telling Another about a Fresh Experience Telling Stories: It s as If They Have This Need to Share Their Experience The Need to Communicate and the Start of a Whale-Watching Career In Sum Emerging Thesis Chapter 5: What a Show Expressions of Show It s a Show Getting and Giving a Show Show and Multiple Interpretations of Wildlife Actions In Sum The Means and Meanings of Show: A Network of Themes Popculture Free Willy Sea World Sea World as comparable Sea World as different Sea World as bad Nature Documentaries The Circus ii

9 Other Popculture In Sum Camera Communication Getting or Missing the Whale View as Shot Aggressive Communication In Sum Vision Dominance Whale Watch Framings Tourist Framings In Sum What People Want In A Whale Predictable Whales Particular Activity In Sum Being Chosen In Sum Alternatives to Show Examples of Alternatives An Alternative and Expressed Communicative Hurdles: Encounter Emerging Thesis Chapter 6: Identifying and Naming Whales Whale Identification Scientific Pointing and Naming: First Identifying the Orcas Tourists and Orca Identification Whale Watch Insiders and Orca Identification Identify to Connect: Feeding a Connection that already exists Identify to Connect: Seeding a Connection Identify to Keep Track iii

10 ID Ability Stress, Fame, and Contest In Sum Naming Whales In Sum Being Bilingual In Sum Terms for Whales Killer Whales vs. Orcas Pronoun Use Code Terms In Sum Emerging Thesis Chapter 7: Discussion Summary Theses: Interpretations of the Findings Thesis: An Absence of Words and a Need to Communicate Thesis: What a Show! Thesis: Identifying and Naming Whales Heuristic Framework: Communication as Environmental Resource Limitations and Future Research Implications for Practice References iv

11 LIST OF FIGURES Figure Number Page 1. Site Maps 9 2. Research Platforms Written and Visual Texts Tourist Participants 43 v

12 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank those who participated in this study. As they must remain anonymous due to Human Subjects guidelines for the purposes of this study, I cannot mention by name or organization the innumerable generous people who allowed me to participate in and observe their communication about nature and whales. However, I can thank in general the whale watch company owners and operators, naturalists, tourists, whale advocates, researchers, and all others who remain unidentified as individuals in this work but who were exceedingly giving and helpful as individuals in the course of my study. Participants were not only open with their communication, but with their time, their boats, their love for the whales, and their consideration for this research; and I am deeply grateful. The whales and the sea were also clearly key participants in this work. I felt fortunate to be near them and remain indebted to them. My hope with this study is that my small part as a social researcher helps lend a lens through which to view the human and whale/nature participants communicative contributions and to serve as one sort of focal point for reflection on human-nature relations. Dissertations, especially ethnographic ones, cannot be generated by a lone researcher. This one was made possible by a range of charitable and thoughtful participants and by a reflective and caring community who invited me in with open arms. I want to thank all of those in the community who supported this research. And I want to thank them for the important work they do. My time on the island would not have been possible without the kind and generous support of Don and Katy Peek, who provided me, my husband, and our dog with a home and sanctuary during my field research. Others on the island further enveloped us in a loving community that we will always consider one of our homes, including Shannon and Brandon Davis, Jody Kennedy and Critter Thompson, Kari Koski and Doug McCutchen, Brendan and Nina Cowan, Albert Shepard, Amy Trainer, Debbie Giles and Jim Rappold, vi

13 Jeff Hogan and Amanda Coleman, Val and Leslie Veirs, Bob Otis, Sus Kellogg, and many many others. Special thanks also go to my friends and colleagues Kari Koski, director of the Soundwatch Boater Education Program, for introducing me to this realm of human-nature relations and being a most perceptive guide, and to orca researcher Debbie Giles for reading this manuscript and providing her supportive feedback. My data synthesis was supported by several hardworking undergraduate students at the University of Washington who assisted me during the final year and a half of this study, helping me with transcription and supportive library research, including Kris Mroczek, Ashley Graeber, Ben Sommers, Jackie Jensen, Gerardo Fernandez, Michelle Labuwi, Grace MacMillan, and Michelle Zimmer. My adviser, Gerry Philipsen, has been a careful and caring guide. Throughout the process, he reminded me, too, to be especially careful of measuring the weight and clarifying the essence of my words to create a strong and supported work of research. My committee, which included Crispin Thurlow, Johnny Palka, Lisa Coutu, Kathy Kimball, and the late Deborah Kaplan, also provided invaluable insights and support from the original notion of this dissertation to the final edits. My family and friends provided the mix of shoring up and patience I needed during this long and sometimes challenging journey, especially during the write-up months when I disappeared for days at a time with no return phone calls. Thanks to my parents: My father, Professor Mike Milstein, for helping me through the dissertation as my bonus devoted adviser, and my mother, Leah Lee, for initially seeding and always feeding my connection with nature. Thanks, too, to my stepparents, Professor Annie Henry (my academic angel along with my Dad) and Bill Girand, and my parents-in-law, Judith and TJ Carr. And, finally, I want to thank my husband, John Carr, who has been my consort throughout, encouraging me in my work, keeping me on target with my deepest hopes for this study, and creating his own dissertation alongside me. vii

14 DEDICATION To my inspiration for this project, the whales and other marine fauna and flora whom I have been so fortunate to encounter. May you thrive in your intersections with our changing human ways. viii

15 1 Chapter 1: Introduction This study is part of a larger conversation within environmental communication and interdisciplinary circles in which a core assumption circulates. This core assumption holds that, though nature is alive and material, human perceptions and practices of nature are inescapably mediated by social-symbolic processes (Cox, 2007). As such, a central objective in the present study is to interrogate empirically how communication mediates human relations with nature. My study pursues this central objective ethnographically and within a particular case study where people were making an effort to be with nature in a particular way. The case study for this investigation is human communication that took place within and around the highest concentration of whale watch tourism operations in the world, the activity spanning the western U.S.-Canada border (U.S. Department of State, 2002). This whale watching activity revolves around a community of endangered orca whales who, in many ways, have played a central role in certain contemporary human-nature relations. Cameron (1998) argues meaning is not fixed nor handed down by fiat. Rather, meaning is socially constructed, or continually negotiated and modified in everyday interaction. With this study, I intended to observe moments of such everyday interaction within the out-of-the-ordinary experience of watching whales. I speculated that, in a human-nature intersection that for most people is by no means an everyday occurrence, observation might reveal particular insight into how human-nature relations are produced, negotiated, and modified in communication. I spent three years studying this specific regional human-nature phenomenon, with three summers (about eight months total) immersed on site. In preparation for this research, I developed a strong network of contacts involved in varying ways in the site and applied for and received Human Subjects approval. The bulk of my research was as a participant-observer on the American and Canadian waters during the annual whale watch season, in whale watch boats and in a whale watch monitoring boat, as well as on land at American shore-based whale watch sites. During the summers, I gathered more than a thousand typed pages of the spoken communication of a wide spectrum of people

16 2 who ranged from intricately involved in the site through employment or advocacy to those briefly involved in their role as tourists. I observed the communication of naturalists and captains in the whale watch industry who served as guides and translators for the human-environment intersection and provided the discursive framework within which many visitors experienced the encounter. I observed the talk of tourists, who arrived conveying their own preconceptions and sometimes negotiated new meanings during their brief experience of this tangible human-nature convergence. I observed the communication of nongovernmental organization staff and volunteers who served as moderators between the marine mammals and the increasing number of humans drawn to them. I observed the communication of other people engaged in creating discourse about the regional whales and their habitat, including the diverse discourses of environmental advocates, state and federal government officials and staff, whale researchers, First Nations tribe members, fishermen, and other locals and visitors. In addition, I observed whales, especially orcas, and the ways in which they shaped and, in many ways, were shaped by communication. The site grounded my case study in an intensive microcosm of a shifting human relationship with nature in the American Pacific Northwest and Canadian West Coast environment, one in which the culturally and ecologically iconic orca whales have transformed, in the past 50 years, from mysterious villain, to marine park performer, to environmental symbol. A year into my study, at the halfway point of my fieldwork, the pendulum of this human-nature relationship swung further. In November 2005, the U.S. federal government followed a precedent set by the Canadian government and announced a surprise ruling that designated the site s fewer than 90 resident orcas as endangered under the Federal Endangered Species Act. This ruling boosted this particular community of orcas from having no U.S. federal protective status besides that provided all marine mammals under the Marine Mammal Protection Act to having a special and rare status under which human-nature relations would be required to shift if the orca population were to be restored.

17 3 Research Question The research question that guided this investigation was informed both by related extant scholarship and by the exploratory fieldwork I pursued on site before forming the question. This study s primary question of concern is: In such an evocative nature-human focal point where people seek out an iconic aspect of nature, what are some of the ways communication mediates human relations with nature? This question formed the basis of relevance by which all the topics and themes generated in this study were included. The use of the conceptual term mediates in this question reflects the ontological orientation of the environmental communication scholarship that informs this work. The conceptual lens of mediate is one that is also mindful and inclusive of interdisciplinary cultural approaches to questions of communication and human-nature relations. A look at the ways communication mediates human-nature relations, then, explores communication both as a culturally constructive force used in negotiating and producing meaning, and as a form of environmental copresence, of humans and nature in forms of conversation. As such, the study s core question allows for an exploration of both how the verbal is instrumental in knowing nature and how nature speaks (Milburn interview with Donal Carbaugh, 2007, p. 1). The groundings and implications of the theoretical concept of mediate are further detailed in the literature review chapter (Chapter 3). Structure of Dissertation In Chapter 2, I contextualize my observations within the case study and describe the study s methods. In so doing, I first describe criteria I used to choose a case study approach. I then provide an overview of the site, which includes descriptions of the emergence of whale watching as a commercial industry as well as its currently conflicted position; the environmental and social context of the site; and historical, contemporary, and unfolding area human-orca relations. I use both documentation and participants own words to tell these stories and to provide a profile of the human, whale, and environmental participants at this site. In this chapter, I also detail the ethnographic methods of my research, describe my methods of data collection, indicate the core

18 4 fieldnote collection sites, explain my methods of fieldnote acquisition, introduce the study participants, and describe my methods of analysis. Several figures, or images, are included in this chapter in order to situate readers in the site and to bring to life the humans, nature, and visual and textual communication within the site. In Chapter 3, I situate the present study in extant scholarship. I first further explicate the term mediate as it is used in the research question, defining the concept as one of core concern particularly within the field of literature in environmental communication. I then explore how scholars have theorized communication as a constitutive and mediating force in social and cultural reality. I also explore how these wider explorations have been engaged by environmental communication scholars to examine ways communication as a constitutive and mediating force informs nature-human relations. In addition, I examine relevant scholarship that specifically engages questions of nature tourism. The scholarship examined in this chapter provided a heuristic theoretical lens through which I engaged with the present study at various stages of observation, interpretation, analysis, or write up. Chapters 2 and 3, therefore, provide a contextual foundation for the remaining chapters, which explore some of the ways participants communicated about humannature relations in this site. The next three chapters, Chapters 4, 5, and 6, feature my findings, which follow a particular fieldnotes-based narrative thematic structure. In these chapters, I directly quote participants communication and texts to create a narrative largely based on their means and meanings. My approach is to provide an abundance of examples of communication and to briefly interpret each example, thus creating a conversation of sorts among participants and my own interpretations of their speech. I divide the findings section into three chapters organized around three over-arching themes generated in the analysis of my observations. Each theme, or chapter, comprises a descriptive exploration of particular ways that communication served to mediate humannature relations. Each chapter concludes with a section titled Emerging Thesis, in which I explore tentative theoretical connections regarding each theme.

19 5 In Chapter 4, I begin with an irony presented by participants when it comes to studying especially the abundance of verbal communication in this site: that perhaps an absence of words at times best mediates human-nature relations. This chapter looks at this absence of words, both in the form of participants identifying silences as particularly meaningful and in the form of participants expressing notions of an ineffable quality to their experiences. In addition, this chapter explores how participants, nonetheless, expressed the notion of a need to verbally communicate about experiences with nature, exemplified in part in an insatiable desire to point at and name aspects of nature. In Chapter 5, I identify and describe a key symbol that many participants used in communicating about the experience of being around the whales. This symbol, which was used by a wide range of participants, was show, as in What a show! I provide examples of a variety of uses of the term show by a cross-section of participants. I then dedicate considerable description and discussion to identifying a network of themes in the site that I interpreted as relating to the key symbol of show in order to further investigate the term s associations with other ways of communicating on site. Following this, I look at participants uses of alternative terms to show to describe human-whale experiences, exploring the communicative dimensions, and sometimes challenges, of alternative term use. In Chapter 6, I look at specific communicative acts that participants identified as helping to shape nature-human relations in this site in the past and at how these and other similar acts continue to mediate relations in particular ways in the contemporary site. The acts of communication I explore each involve forms of discursively labeling whales. They include whale identification, whale naming, being bilingual, and terms for whales. In describing these acts, I explore how various forms of whale labeling were characterized as relating to shifts in perception, practice, policy and communication of human-nature relations. Finally, in Chapter 7, I summarize the observations and interpretations of the preceding chapters. I then put my interpretations of the findings in explicit conversation with the literature, drawing connections and developing several theses about

20 6 communication and mediation of human-nature relations in this research site. Relatedly, I also introduce an analogy of communication as environmental resource and discuss how this analogy might serve as a heuristic resource for work on communication and environment. I close by discussing limitations of the study, future research, and implications for practice.

21 7 Chapter 2: Site and Methods This chapter discusses the research site and methods of this project. I first provide an overview of the site of this case study, including descriptions of the area whale watching industry; the environmental and social setting; and historical, contemporary, and unfolding human-orca relations. In this overview, I include participants voices, yet I do not analyze their communication in depth as I do in the findings. Instead, I include their voices along with my own and the voices of other sources as storytellers, providing context for the findings to come in the following chapters. Following this overview, I explain the ethnographic research methods used for the study. I then provide a description of methods of data collection, including the core fieldnote collection sites, methods of fieldnote acquisition, and the study participants. I also explain procedures for analysis. The Site Numerous ways exist to investigate questions about how communication mediates the human relationship with nature. Carbaugh (1996) argues that, in cultural explorations of human-nature relations and communication, of special importance is the grappling with highly particular, socially situated, symbolically constructed images in place. Specific case studies that trace the patterned use and interpretation of nature in communication and community are essential (p. 54) to these cultural explorations. According to Carbaugh, such case studies not only provide in depth, site-specific investigations, but also enable wider circles of environmental communication researchers to do comparative assessments of means for conceiving of nature, as well as the attendant attitudes these cultivate and constrain. In selecting a case study for this project, I wanted a situation where people were making an effort to be with nature in some way. In such a site, I hoped to investigate communication by a wide range of people seeking a human-nature intersection. The site is a key element of this study s approach. As stated in Chapter 1, this study s primary question of concern is: In such an evocative nature-human focal point where people seek out an iconic aspect of nature, what are some of the ways communication mediates human relations with nature? The study s site provides a contemporary nature-human

22 8 hub that serves as a draw for humans to interact with other elements of the living environment, especially orca whales. This site not only allowed for the investigation of communication by a wide range of people seeking a human-nature intersection, it also provided an intensive microcosm of human-nature relations in transformation. In the past 50 years, this particular community of orcas has undergone major shifts in human perception and praxis. Since the 1950s, the orcas have perceptually transformed from a dangerous villain to be targeted for military bombing practice, to a marine park performer to be captured and looked at by paying audiences, to an environmental symbol to be sought out in the wild and heeded as the pulse of oceanic health. Many now argue that the area orcas are too popular and may be suffering from too much attention (Williams et al., 2002). The phrase often associated with these orcas, as well as with other flora and fauna that are the target of extensive and intensive human adoration, is We may be loving them to death. So, what explains this shift from military bombing practice target to both cultural and ecological icon? The answer, in part, may be the rise of a tourism industry that has helped shape nature-human relations by providing a wider public access to the whales. This access has enabled a specific range of discourse about nature, which I begin to explore in this study. The Whale Watching Industry I chose the site for its intensive daily whale watch activity that draws a wide range of people to the West Coast Pacific Canadian and American waters, an area called the Salish Sea (See Figure 1). This highest concentration of whale watching in the world revolves largely around a community of about 90 endangered orca whales called the Southern Residents 1. Area whale watching tourism was begun in part by people concerned about the whales; Greenpeace, for instance, ran one of the first area charter tours. 1 Scientists refer to the Southern Resident orcas as a community, which is the term I use in this work. The community is made up of 3 pods, or matriarchal families, called the J, K, and L pods. Unlike mammaleating transient orcas featured in many nature documentaries, the Southern Residents are primarily fish eaters. Scientific studies and earliest historical records place the Southern Resident community in the Salish Sea ecosystem. While the orcas leave the area for stretches of time, especially in the winter, the Salish Sea is part of their regular territory.

23 Figure 1. Site Maps. The two maps below indicate the international site of this case study. In the map on the left, a box is drawn around the Canadian and American transboundaried area where the whale watch tourism under study is conducted. The map on the right provides a magnified view of this boxed area. 9

24 Retail sales of orca watching tickets began in the region in the late 1970s, but did not gross more than $10,000 (USD) in annual sales until Whale watch companies credit the movie Free Willy, released in 1993, with creating a boom in the business; by the end of the 1997 season, sales approached $5.7 million, with 81 commercial boats from both sides of the border carrying more than 250,000 passengers (Osborne, 1999). Concurrently, public whale watching from the shore at the American San Juan Island s Lime Kiln Point State Park (Whale Watch Park) steadily increased from the park dedication in 1984 through1996 to the current number of about 200,000 annual visitors. Today, the area is often sited as one of the fastest growing whale watch areas in the world and supports a multi-million dollar whale watch industry that annually draws more than 500,000 people who hope to see the Southern Residents from land, sea, and air (Koski & Osborne, 2005). 2 Today, the motored element of the industry is also contested it s seen both as a vehicle to positively connect people with the whales and as introducing risks to the whales via engine noise, exhaust in their breathing zone, and increased stresses. While scientists study the effects on orcas of a nearly constant summertime daylight presence of boats, new questions about the state of human-whale relations arise. One study participant, an orca researcher, said, We are the first generation to view captured whales as wrong. How will the next generation view whale watching? I provide some examples here of communication to allow participants to provide insight into the sometimes contested character of the activity and industry. Some participants expressed the notion that the orcas are not bothered by the boats. One researcher who studied the whales, sometimes from a boat, said, These guys are an 2 The most recent global whale watch survey numbers, which are from 1998, identify worldwide whale watch activities as a more than billion dollar (USD) industry involving more than 80 countries and territories and more than 9 million participants. Between 1991 and 1998, the number of whale watchers increased by an annual average of 12.1% and money spent on tours by an annual average of 21.4%. In 1998, the value of the overall whale-watching industry in Washington State was $13.6 million (USD) (commercial boat-based viewing, $9.6 million; land-based viewing, $4.0 million) and in British Columbia $69.1 million (USD) (commercial boat-based viewing, $68.4 million; land-based viewing, $0.7 million), based on estimated expenditures for tours, food, travel, accommodations, and other expenses. More recent estimates are unavailable, as are expenditures by whale-watchers on private vessels (Hoyt, 2001). An estimated 60-80% of this value likely originated from the viewing of killer whales in the Georgia Basin and Puget Sound (Wiles, 2004). 10

25 11 amazingly boat tolerant population. It s part of their summer routine. They get plenty of time in the winter alone. We re just something they work around or under. Most of the time we re just another piece of flotsam for them to swim by, just a little noisier. They have that three-dimensional world. This statement was similar to one made by a whale watch company owner, who said, Boats aren t a big deal. We re just a log to them; they're living in a 3-dimensional world. The speakers point to ways they perceive the orcas view the boats as well as the embodied experience they believe the ocean affords the whales. Others spoke of whale watching marking an evolution of human-whale relations. One naturalist told tourists on a whale watch boat: Thank god humans have evolved to the point where we come out and see them in the wild instead of capturing their babies and putting them in aquariums. 3 On the other hand, some participants expressed the notion that the commercial and the private boats were hounding, chasing, or herding the orcas. Here is one local s comment: They were surrounded on both sides with whale watch boats herding them. It was pretty awful. A whale researcher talked about seeing what she described as the great whale hunt from a hilltop perspective. She said, It s impossible to not see it as invasive. The hunt is on. When the whole whale fleet is here at the peak times of day, you see them zoom in from Vancouver, from Victoria, from the islands. I think the whale watch industry would benefit from seeing this perspective. They just think of themselves in their boats, but they don t get that perspective. These speakers frame whale watching from a land-based human perspective and speak of a whale watch industry seen in mass 4. Some participants expressed ambivalence about the boats, seeing them as both bothering the whales and being possible effective education platforms. One researcher who studied the orcas said, I came out here because I thought all these boats were a 3 Many environmental groups align with this stance and include whaling as one of the ills that whale watching may effectively replace. Corkeron (2004) identified four main arguments used by environmental Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to justify their support for whale watching, including: observation induces conservation; commercial boats create opportunities for research platforms; viewing wild free-ranging animals is better than viewing captive; and whale watching and whaling do not mix. 4 A survey-based study in the site found land-based whale watchers were significantly more concerned than boat-based watchers about the presence of boats disturbing the whales, as well as their own experiences watching the whales (Finkler & Higham, 2004).

26 12 nuisance to the whales. I also personally think the whale watch boat offers the educational platform that is the best and I think the best hope for these killer whales is education. Other comments were equally mixed: In one moment on a whale watch boat, two tourists said contrasting statements as they narrated what nearby orcas were doing: They re trying to avoid the boats. They re paying the boat a visit. Some spoke about changing the structure of the industry. One whale advocate suggested to government officials they shut down area commercial whale watching and have their own program. He said, It would be like a national park where everyone is trained and there are regulations. As it is, we are fighting capitalism when it comes to the whales. With the free market, it s just that. So there are no requirements, no clear enforceable standards. Everyone is doing just what they want to do. Forms of regulation, from this more radical suggestion of eliminating the element of profit-making to suggestions, of required industry limits and standards were a common topic of conversation on site. Soundwatch, a whale watch and marine wildlife monitoring organization based on San Juan Island, works with the whale watch industry to develop industry-wide boating guidelines to minimize impact, and also daily works from a boat platform during the summer tourist season to propagate guidelines to the public, monitor commercial and private boater whale watching behavior, and record and report infractions of the guidelines. A handful of Canadian monitoring organizations, including Victoria-based M3, also at times have boats on the water. Another non-profit group on San Juan Island Orca Relief encourages shore-based watching as a low-impact alternative. The international whale-watching hub is the focus of commercial whale watch tourism boats and pleasure boaters originating from major Canadian and American cities, several smaller cities, and a dozen or more island tourist destinations. The industry tracks the orcas locations through a network pager system that companies pay into each year and that supports a human whale spotter on a hill on Canada s Vancouver Island. Companies guard orca location information from the public.

27 13 About a dozen companies based on San Juan Island (passenger motorboats and kayaks) and about 15 companies based in Victoria on southern Vancouver Island (passenger motor boats) represent the densest clusters of industry in the area. The total of 94 commercial whale watch motor boats (and the additional kayaks) of the more than 50 American and Canadian companies (24 U.S. and 25 Canadian) operating in the area sometimes outnumber the orcas during peak summer months (Soundwatch, 2007) 5. In 2006, an average of 18 vessels daily accompanied a group of whales (with 85% of the vessels comprising commercial whale watch boats, private boats, and kayaks, and the remaining 15% comprising research, shipping, aircraft, and private fishing) 6. Industry tours begin at 8:30 a.m. and go until sunset, cost an average of $65 (USD) for an adult passenger, and ranged from three to five hours in length. Over the years, the Whale Watch Operators Association Northwest (WWOA-NW), the industry organization representing 70% of the American and Canadian whale watch companies, has collaborated with Soundwatch to issue best practices boating guidelines for operators. The primary goals of the voluntary guidelines are to minimize potential negative impacts on marine wild life populations, provide viewing opportunities so watchers have the ability to enjoy and learn about wildlife through observation, manage vessel traffic in order to fairly and efficiently move vessels through transition zones as well as in the viewing area ( Enviro-Social Context: Whales, Transboundaried Waters, and Humans As stated, the West Coast transboundaried Salish Sea of Canada and the United States contains the highest concentration of whale watching in the world. The high density in this region exists for a number of reasons. First, the watching is focused on a distinctive draw, the Southern Resident orcas. Orcas are often characterized by environmental practitioners as one of the top charismatic megafauna, or large animals to whom people tend to be uniquely drawn. Second, the whales are often present as they are not 5 Overall, the area industry is split about half and half between Canada and the U.S., with Canada having more boats in smaller sizes, and the U.S. having fewer boats in larger sizes. 6 These averages are taken from Soundwatch s 2006 counts, which were recorded daily every half hour during the summer tourist season of boats that were within a half-mile radius envelope around a group of whales Soundwatch was following.

28 14 migratory; as such, they are dependable for an industry based on watchable wildlife. Third, the Southern Residents often swim close to land, so people can often watch from shore and industry and private boaters can take relatively short boat rides to reach them. On the American side of the border, the orcas summer routes tend to be in close proximity to the San Juan Islands and a few, large coastal towns in Washington State; in the winter, the orcas sometimes come down by Seattle. On the Canadian, the whales are often near Vancouver Island s cities of Victoria and Sydney, as well as the mainland s Vancouver and a few other destinations in British Columbia. All these towns and cities are independently tourist destinations that have fed the growing whale watch industry. In addition, tourists moving among these destinations sometimes take boats or small seaplanes that include a chance at whale watching as part of the shuttle service. Besides the Southern Residents, the occasional humpback whales, gray whales, minke whales, and pods of mammal-eating transient orca whales also come through the Salish Sea area. Whale watch boats will sometimes focus on these whales, especially when the Southern Residents are not around. Whale watch boats also look for other types of animals, especially bald eagles and the gargantuan stellar sea lions. 7 My home base for this research was San Juan Island, the most populated island of the San Juan Island group and home to the densest cluster of American whale watching companies in this site. The San Juan Islands are located between the coast of Washington state and Canada s Vancouver Island, and were once part of a border dispute. After the locally infamous Pig War between Great Britain and the United States in the mid 1800s, the islands became the property of the United States. 8 On maps, the islands push a northward bump in the border between Canada and the United States. One can be in the waters of the American San Juan Islands and look south to see the southern tip of Canada s Vancouver Island. My observations from the water were on American boats, but my path criss-crossed the border and intersected with Canadian boats. My fieldnotes 7 Other animals that whale watch staff will regularly point out for tourists are California sea lions, Dall s porpoise, harbor porpoise, harbor seals, and various sea birds. 8 A quarrel over an American farmer s killing of a British-owned pig, who had wandered onto the farmer s property, started the international standoff that came to be known as the Pig War. The war was otherwise bloodless.

29 15 include Canadian communication as well as American that took place over the marine radio, which was always in use among whale watch operators. 9 San Juan Island is a quiet island that has a population of about 15,000, which includes people with second or third homes elsewhere. During the summer, however, the island population doubles to triples with visitors and summer residents (R. Jacobsen, April 9, 2007). Many year-round residents are seasonally part of the tourism economy either centrally or peripherally. Whale watching tourism activity coincides with the tourism season as it is largely organized around the whales summer presence the Southern Residents tend to frequent the Salish Sea between mid-april and mid-october, following the salmon who swim the waters on their way back to their freshwater breeding grounds. One closing note on the choice of an island site for this study: I have been drawn to islands as sites of human-nature encounters for as long as I have been interested in these issues. To me, islands represent places where there may lie possibility for observing nature-human relations in particularly focused ways. I ve also wondered whether ocean settings allow relations to be negotiated in different ways from terrestrial settings. In fact, scholars have illustrated that modern environmentalist discourse began when European scientists became aware of the impact of colonization on vulnerable tropical island environments (Muhlhausler & Peace, 2001). The study of islands continues to be at the center of contemporary scientific environmental research; they may also prove fruitful sites for environmental communication research. Historical Area Human-Orca Relations Local perceptions of and relations with the Southern Resident orcas have experienced major shifts in recent history. Before colonization, the orcas were central to many area cultures of First Nations peoples. Some recognized the orca as another tribe or people that walked the land at night. Some saw the orca as purveying the justice of the ocean. And some made the orcas the namesake of their clan. Contemporary accounts point to the 9 I use operators and captains interchangeably to refer to the drivers of the whale watch boats. Operators was the term used more often within the whale watch community when talking to one another, while captains was used more often by whale watch companies when presenting themselves to tourists on the boats or in their marketing texts.

30 16 orcas rarely if ever being hunted by area First Nations peoples, though other whales were hunted. Prior to European colonization, human inhabitants of the Salish Sea area were able to live within carrying capacity of the region due to a biological abundance, including rich populations of salmon that provided an abundant resource for both humans and orcas. Ecological stability was disturbed beginning with post-1850 Euro-American settlement, which brought a 100-fold increase in human population density and more destructive and far-reaching practices of resource extraction and habitat alteration (Osborne, 1999). This new influx of both a high population of humans and of a different cultural relationship with nature resulted in severe competition for space and resources with local species of mega-fauna, including the area orcas. During most of the 20 th century, most Westerners believed the orcas were competitors for fish and a threat to humans, a perception that was tied to a human practice of regular attacks on orcas. During the 1940s, a standard practice of the Royal Canadian Air Force was to use wild orcas as targets for bombing practice. In 1960, the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans temporarily installed a machine gun on the shore to cull the population, though there is no record of this machine gun being used. Fishermen carried rifles, which they routinely shot at orcas who ventured near their nets. During the live captures by marine parks in the 1960s and 1970s, recent bullet wounds were noted on 25% of the Southern Resident Community and 25% of the orcas who died in captivity were found to have bullets lodged deep in their bodies (Morton, 2002; Osborne, 1999) 10. Stories also circulated on site of an earlier practice of people waiting on bridges to drop large rocks onto orcas passing beneath. Some estimate the population level of Southern Resident orcas at 250 before human impact associated with European colonization onward (Osborne, 1999). Others estimate the count as much higher. Others suggest the military bombing alone may have wiped out entire pods of orcas at once (Osborne, 1999). 10 The first two live captures in the area, in 1962 and 1964, involved an orca being both netted and shot for California s Marineland who died during capture and an orca being harpooned for capture by Vancouver Aquarium who then survived on display for three months (Hoyt, 1981).

31 17 Between 1962 and 1973, often using local fishermen, the marine entertainment industry did live captures in the area. The Southern Residents were the first orcas to be seen by the public in aquariums and marine parks and were the first to star under the performance moniker of Shamu at Sea World. Popular perceptions of the orcas experienced a major shift as the public saw the Southern Residents as trained captive performers in pools in the United States and Canada, and, starting in 1968, in Japan, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Australia, France, and Germany (Hoyt, 1981). Several captures of this community resulted in the removal of about 45 individuals and the killing of about a dozen more in the process of the captures. In addition, about a dozen of the estimated 45 captives died in their first year in captivity due to bad conditions (Orca Network, 2007; Osborne, 1999). In 1976, public response to media coverage and eyewitness accounts of the brutal and often deadly marine industry captures led to captures being outlawed in Washington State. The marine parks turned to Canada, where they could still capture the Southern Residents and also add to their captures the Northern Residents, a community of orcas who have their main territory farther north. However, scientists had already begun an intensive photographic study and census of these populations, finding the Southern and Northern Residents numbered far fewer than the capture industry s estimates that ran into the thousands. Three years after the last of the captures of the 45 Southern Residents, only 70 remained (The Center for Whale Research, 2007). Canada shut its doors to captures, as well. In the census, scientists also discovered the Southern Residents were organized around older matriarchs and divided into three matriarchal family pods. They learned, too, that the Southern Residents were a unique taxonomic class onto themselves, with DNA that indicated they had not bred outside their community for at least 10,000 years. In the process of identification, scientists identified the families of captive orcas, causing a sensation among research staff in marine parks who learned of these findings. Wild orca researcher Alexandra Morton (2002), then a marine park orca researcher, writes that happy Shamu in his cozy little home could now be traced back to mothers and

32 18 families who the whale was removed from in the wild. All of the information gleaned by scientists served to inform a shifting human perception of the orcas. Some also credit the captive orcas themselves with shifting human perception about whales. Rich Osborne (1999), former director of San Juan Island s Whale Museum, argues that as a result of increased familiarity with killer whales in the captive setting, cultural attitudes among Salish Sea humans again returned to where the overwhelming majority of people revered the killer whales and made it illegal to attack or capture them (p. 93). A close proximity to captive orcas led some researchers, for instance, to become activists both against captivity and for whales in general. One notable example is Paul Spong, a psychologist who in 1967 was hired to study Skana, a Southern Resident orca from K pod who was captured and taken to the Vancouver Aquarium. Spong was interested in Skana s brain 11 and, through increased interaction over time, developed a relationship with Skana, a respect for her as a social and inquisitive creature, and a conviction that Skana was suffering terribly in her tiny tank. After making his views known to the aquarium and the public, he lost access to Skana and was told by his boss to check into a psychiatric ward. Spong turned to Greenpeace, expanding the group s focus from primarily antinuclear activism to include whale advocacy. He helped organize and lead Greenpeace s first anti-whaling campaigns on the open seas. Greenpeace s efforts helped bring about the world moratorium on whaling under the International Whaling Commission and this campaign to Save the Whales, seeded by a relationship between a person and a captive Southern Resident orca, in many ways came to symbolize the environmental movement of the 1970s and 1980s (Morton, 2002). After captures were made illegal in Canada and the U.S., marine park captures moved to Iceland, Japan, Argentina, and Russia. Orcas die prematurely young in captivity and only one of the Southern Residents captured is still alive. Since 1970, Lolita has survived at the Miami Seaquarium in a pool too small for her by the letter of the U.S. Animal Welfare Act activists with the support of governors and U.S. senators continue 11 An orca s brain is four times the size of a human s and is only exceeded in size by sperm whales.

33 19 to attempt a return of Lolita to the Southern Resident community, but so far to no avail (Orca Network, 2007). 12 Contemporary Area Human-Orca Relations The impact on the Southern Resident orcas of both historic human attacks and captures was severe. In the past 30 years, since the outlawing of area captures, the Southern Residents have made some recovery in population, though their numbers have fluctuated and not remained at a steady climb. At the time of this writing, they numbered 85. Separate from harmful human impact, the Southern Residents have long, socially complex life spans (two of the three current matriarchs are in their 90s), a very low reproductive output 13, and a high preference for a single food resource for their primary sustenance (salmon, especially Chinook). Today s negative human impact on the Southern Residents is not as directly obvious as in the past century. Instead, orcas experience harmful human impact through a decrease of populations of salmon, toxic pollution, and behavioral disturbance from vessels (largely water vessels). A year into my study, the Environmental Protection Agency outlined these three main risks in its Nov. 18, 2005, ruling of the Southern Residents as an endangered species. Earlier, in November 2001, Canada designated the Southern Residents as endangered. Each country s designation recognizes an at risk population that needs more than mere conservation instead, the acts designate the community as in need of fast recovery. Both nations will have policy come into play in the following years and the ways humans interact with and communicate about these orcas and their ecosystem could alter drastically. I briefly outline the three greatest human-generated risks to the Southern Residents, as identified by the Canadian and U.S. endangered listings. These risks of humans decreasing salmon populations, introducing persistent pollution, and creating vessel 12 A recent documentary titled Lolita: Slave to Entertainment with the slogan She s dying to amuse you details Lolita s story and looks at the multi-billion-dollar marine theme park industry. 13 Orcas experience puberty and menopause, have month gestation periods, and average only one successful birth every ten years during their fertile stage of life. In addition, due to the impact of humangenerated pollution, newborn survival rate is low (Morton, 2002).

34 20 presence were part of the underlying knowledge framework for especially local participant communication about human-nature relations in this site. First, humans have drastically reduced area wild salmon populations, some to the point of endangered species status under the U.S. and Canadian endangered species acts. These drastic reductions have come through overfishing, freshwater habitat destruction, and the newest threat to wild salmon of disease through farmed salmon. Southern Residents depend on salmon for their survival. Besides a drastically decreased population, scientists also have identified decreases in the size of existing salmon, some as much as halving in size over the past few decades 14. As top predators in the oceanic food web 15, the orcas bioacummulate humangenerated toxic pollutants dumped directly or indirectly into the ocean and ingested by their prey and their prey s prey. As such, the orcas are among the most contaminated mammals on earth, filled with extremely high levels of toxic chemicals including humangenerated mercury, brominated flame retardants (PBDEs), DDTs, and PCBs 16. Scientist findings suggest these toxins are causing immune and reproductive system deficiencies in the Southern Residents and killing off newborns who ingest the toxins directly through their mothers milk (Ross, 2000). While female orcas are able to pass off some of the toxins to their own offspring, male orcas show a steady rise and are dying so rapidly now that soon there may not be any breeding males (Morton, 2002, p. 296). 17 Orcas 14 One possible explanation for size reduction relates to human-generated freshwater habitat destruction. Size is an adaptation particularly useful for long migrations. For instance, many of the fish off the Washington coast are from the Columbia River; the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam in the 1930s and the damming of the upper watershed made size a less important characteristic and cut off the spawning grounds of an immense race of upper Columbia Chinook with weights ranging up to 100 lbs., and salmon weighing 70 lbs quite common (S. Zuckerman, personal communication, April 15, 2006). 15 Orcas are top predators, eating whales and sharks. Southern Residents are thought to eat mainly salmon, which are far enough up in the food chain to be loaded with bioacccumulated pollutants. 16 In April 2007, the Washington State legislature passed a bill to ban flame retardants (BPDEs), which is expected to be signed into law by the governor. While PCBs and DDTs were outlawed in North America, other persistent toxic chemicals such as PBDEs are not and are on a precipitous rise. Studies scientists referred to included one that found a tripling of PBDE levels in harbor porpoises of the Salish Sea from the early 1990s to the early 2000s. 17 While there are safe alternatives to the particularly toxic and widespread flame retardants called PBDEs, which are found at high levels in orcas and in people, they continue to be incorporated into most of our environment, including such daily materials as our computers and clothes.

35 21 store these toxins in their blubber. When they do not have enough food say, from a lack of salmon they ingest their blubber, ingesting the toxins along with it. In addition to these non-point sources of pollution, which enter the ocean habitat through the watershed and the regional atmosphere, orcas also are exposed to point sources of pollution such as waste outfalls for sewage and industrial waste. The presence of vessels boats used for commercial shipping, commercial and recreational fishing, whale watching, military operations, recreational and passenger excursions, scientific research, or otherwise has been identified by scientists as introducing stress to the orcas through reducing surface area for breathing, introducing engine exhaust to their breathing area, and introducing persistent noise pollution that interrupts, masks, and/or possibly causes permanent damage to the orcas primary sensory and communicative channel of hearing and sound (Erbe, 2002). 18 Though whale watch boats are by no means the only vessels introducing such risks to the whales, because they are consistently at close proximity with the orcas they are viewed as contributing to a chronic vessel presence. In addition, collisions are possible; during my fieldwork, an orca surfaced under a whale watch boat motor and was deeply cut 19. One orca researcher said: Imagine I were holding a chainsaw right now <he s about 12 feet from me> and the chain saw is on and rotating. It s not dangerous per se because we have this distance between us. But put into that that there is water in between us and we re both moving and there are multiple rotating chainsaws around you. Then add to that that you are an extremely acoustically sensitive animal. That s what these rotating propellers are for them. 18 Because of the physics of water, sound is the primary modality in which information is carried. A killer whale s aquatic world comes to it almost exclusively through its sense of hearing. Yet, unlike automotive engines, boat engines are not designed with quiet in mind. Instead, because they are contained below the water and out of human earshot, their high level of noise pollution is not outlawed (Morton, 2002). 19 Between 1984 and 2003, there were 32 recorded incidents of collisions between whale watching boats and whales. Thirty-one of these incidents occurred in North America and one in Norway. Of the whales hit, 17 were humpback, two minke, nine fin, and one each of gray, sperm, and orca. This information seemed helpful in demonstrating the consequences of the whale-watching industry and their targets. The number of reports probably did not reflect the number of actual occurrences (International Whaling Commission, 2006).

36 22 Endangered Species Regulations and Unfolding Human-Orca Relations The orcas are deeply ensconced in the net of ecological relations and prevailing human cultural and environmental practices. Their possible recovery is largely dependent on changing systemic human-nature relations and, as such, would benefit multiple species. Because of this, many characterize the implementation of recovery plans as enormous and daunting tasks. For many listed species of marine mammals, there is a primary cause of direct mortality that can be attributed to a particular source (e.g., ship strikes, fishery interactions, or harvest), but this is not the case for Southern Residents. It is unknown which of the threats has caused the decline or may have the most significant impact on recovery of the population. It may be a combination of threats or the cumulative effect that are the problem (National Marine Fisheries Service, 2006, p. 117). Some orca experts have begun to express frustration about time that has passed without the two governments implementing regulations for recovery strategies, saying the time passing leaves the orcas at risk and could damage recovery attempts. A San Juan Island-based Southern Residents researcher spoke to the national Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail, and made a distinction between environmental communication and practice. He said he had heard a lot of words about orca recovery on both sides of the border, but the whales don't eat words, they eat salmon and that is what has to be protected (West, 2007). In the midst of these concerns is the growing industry of whale watching, an industry that in some ways can be seen as replacing commercial fishing as a main source of environment-based core economy in the region. With two national governments facing overwhelming systemic threats to the Southern Residents, many say officials will turn to the easiest target. Regulating the whale watch industry, said some participants, will be far easier than regulating pressing human-generated environmental issues such as reduction of salmon, toxic pollutants, or even oil spills 20. One orca scientist said, I have two levels 20 While both prey and pollutant risks can be plainly seen as systemically related to human cultural relations with nature, oil spills are, as well. A state official characterized the orcas habitat of the Puget Sound as an economic engine, which regularly has oil tankers plying its waters. In contrast, a scientist

37 23 of thought. My cynical side says nothing s gonna happen. The other, if I understand the act, is what it forces the governments to do is spend money to correct the harms that stand in the way of the health of those orcas that s pollution and prey. I don t see the government doing that. Instead, some people think boats are a problem and they re easier to regulate. It may not be surprising that the endangered listing was met with heightened communication among the whale watch industry. First reactions by whale watch company owners after the U.S. listing ranged from hopeful to concerned about being targeted. Some expressed hopes the ruling would bring more attention to salmon and pollution issues and would only help the industry in the long run by protecting and bringing more attention to the orcas. Others said they thought they would be watched very closely by the governments and enforcement might come into play. Other whale watch industry participants responded to the ruling by reflecting about the current state of whale watching and the possible future. While the area-wide whale watching industry continues to grow, one company owner asserted that at least on San Juan Island, we ve reached our saturation point. No one on San Juan Island can start a business; there s just no way to stay afloat. Just like there s a carrying capacity for the boats, this area has a capacity for the orcas. I think we re doing them right. I wouldn t want to see any more boats though. If there s 100 boats, the whales have to choose where to come up instead of their natural deal. Here, the whale watch company owner draws a connection between boats and whales in terms of carrying capacity. In this way, he not only compares boats to whales in arguing both have a carrying capacity, but he interrelates the boats with the whales, using an ecological capacity discourse to argue for a halt to the industry s growth. As the months after the ruling passed, the Whale Watch Operators Association met with NOAA representatives and heard whale watch voluntary guidelines would need to characterized the Puget Sound as a chemical soup. The government officials perceptions are connected to policy: both U.S. and Canadian policy is to omit areas from designated orca critical habitat if there are economic or security reasons to do so. The orcas habitat is, in fact, deeply economically important to both governments: Vancouver is Canada s number one port, while Seattle and Tacoma are tied as the number three ports in the United States, both with plans to expand.

38 24 change. Changes involved putting a stop to what some operators described as the bread and butter of the industry, a practice where a boat motors ahead of the whales and parks with engine off as the whales pass by often very closely, at times swimming under the boat. Instead, operators heard they should practice parallel watching, in which boats parallel the orcas at a low speed. Some argued NOAA officials did not have the experience on the water to realize this practice of parallel watching might be more dangerous to the orcas as it involved constant engine noise. In addition some argued this change in boat behavior would break a predictable pattern they had established with the orcas. Some company owners said the regulations they foresee would call for fewer boats and farther distances, which the industry would respond to with bigger, taller boats owned by larger companies, creating a corporatization of whale watching. During my second and third summers of fieldwork on the water, with the endangered listings now in place on both sides of the border but no enforceable regulations, I observed a shift in whale watch operators communication among each other. There was not as much easy banter on the marine radio. Instead, the operators had a heightened note of carefulness in what they said over the radio. One whale advocate who regularly listened to the marine radio said he noticed a new environment of suspicion and persecution among the operators. The ambiguity of the current situation, with no mandatory whale watch guidelines in place but new strong suggestions from the government with which many operators disagreed, introduced a new level of stress and confusion. Here, a captain and a naturalist speak to me in the whale watch boat wheelhouse while motoring the tour toward whales. Captain: It s stressful for us and for the whales, I think. It used to be we d turn the engines off when they approached. Now, we re keeping them on and constantly moving. This constant paralleling makes a lot of noise and the point is to be making less noise. When they re spread, I m trying to back up and there s a whale right behind me. Now, if a whale swims toward us, I get worried <puts his hands in front of his chest, pushing away>. I don t want to tell a whale to go away!

39 25 Naturalist: It s people who aren t out here who are making the rules. I think they just felt they had to do something new because of the ruling. But we can t control the whales and where they go. Captain: The news was out here last week and they asked me do you think you re hurting the whales? I said, If I did, I wouldn t be out here. Naturalist: This guy <touches the captain s shoulder>, he s the last person who is going to harm these whales. He loves them. Captain: Most of these operators out here, except maybe some of the owners who don t drive, love them. They care about these whales more than most people. They care about the whales environment and they want what s best for the whales. In discussing these new guidelines, the participants draw parallels between the operators and the whales experience, saying that the shift in this particular human-whale practice is taking away a mutually understood predictability and, as such, is mutually stressful. They differentiate their relations with the orcas from those of the government officials who made the new recommended guidelines, saying the rule makers are people who aren t out here. In contrast, the captain loves the whales and the other operators care for the whales more than most people. The changes that were happening in whale watching during my fieldwork were not only stressful. The changes in the ways boats interacted with the orcas were also kind of sad for the operators, said a whale watch industry monitor, who said, a lot of the magic that happens with whales in the moments when you are surprised is going to be regulated away. At the same time, whale watch captains often argued that the biggest whale watching threat was not the industry, but instead the private boaters who often arrived knowing neither the whales nor guidelines to follow, and that this transient population would be impossible to regulate. Finally, some of the operators spoke of a now more urgent need to shape the whale watch industry to make certain it was having a positive effect on human-nature relations. One company owner and captain said that for the viability of both the industry and the orcas, more and more, the industry needs to make sure we re having a positive impact

40 26 on the whales. That means we need to educate. One thing the industry s done wrong is not touted that. We need to really educate people on long-term effects. Try to hit home about pollution and salmon issues. I don t think I ve figured out how to best do that. And I definitely don t think the industry has done a good job getting this out to the public. My own observations mirrored this participant s. I observed that often even when captains or naturalists would mention the orcas were endangered, many tourists would not question why they were endangered. In addition, when naturalists mentioned specific human-generated risks to the orcas, tourists would often respond with silence, one or two cursory questions, or by changing the subject to something more positive. Seeing this common type of tourist response raised something of an alarm bell for me that helped provide an urgency to my question: In such an evocative nature-human focal point where humans seek out an iconic aspect of nature, what are some ways communication mediates the human relationship with nature? In this section, I ve attempted to contextualize orca-human relations to provide a historical and contemporary cultural backdrop to the communication I investigated in this study. I also want to offer some more meta-level human-orca links that were suggested by some study participants as serving as points of connection that draw humans to want to be near orcas and to come to this site. Among these points of connection were that orcas are social animals who live in close-knit families organized around older matriarchs while this is not always true for humans, by any means, it is always true for orcas, and participants often focused on this social arrangement in their communication. In addition, orcas have developed complex and stable vocal and behavioral cultures; each pod has a unique identifiable dialect (Osborne, 1999; Rendell & Whitehead, 2001) these characteristics at times served as points of comparison with humans on the whale watch boats. Another more implicit point of comparison was, as has been mentioned, that orcas sit at the very pinnacle of the aquatic food chain: an orca will eat a shark (Morton, 2002, p. 45). As such, they are often considered the rulers of the sea. Similarly, humans often perceive themselves at the top of the terrestrial food chain and as rulers of the land.

41 27 Area authors on the orcas sometimes implied that human feelings of connection with orcas might be based in deeper links. One such link was based on orcas being cetaceans (which include whales, dolphins, and porpoises), mammals who once knew the land as home and returned to the aquatic environment 50 million years ago. Their bodies adapted, nostrils migrated to the top of their heads, arms and fingers that still contain every bone found in humans became encased in a paddle called the pectoral fin, and their legs atrophied completely. Orca researcher Alexandra Morton (2002) wrote of looking at an orca named Eve during her autopsy, and drew both connections and contrasts between humans and whales. It was remarkable to see Eve s fingers hidden in her paddle-like pectoral fins, little short bones laid out in perfect order. Never used, fully intact. Those fingers underscored one of the vast differences between our species. Humans use their bodies to change their environment. Whales change their bodies to adapt to their environment (Morton, 2002, p. 243). Participants drew on these and other links between orcas and humans, highlighting such similarities and differences, and negotiating different meanings about human-nature relations. In sum, historical, contemporary, and unfolding relations between humans and orcas provided both backdrop and topic for on-site communication. Orca whale watching, an emergent and contested intersection between humans and orcas, provided an obvious vantage from which to examine this communication. Accordingly, the site provided a dynamic case study to examine ways communication mediated human-nature relations. Method: Ethnography In this site, I was especially interested in how people communicated when they were with the nature they had sought out; in this case, when the whales very presence made them tangible to people. In this site, people could often see and sometimes hear whales and often spoke of this experience as it was in process. As such, ethnographic methods allowed for a focused exploration, letting me explore people s discourse in specific sites, times, and contexts (Philipsen, 1982) and often during close encounters with whales. By approaching this work as a participant observer, I, too, along with study participants, was

42 28 immersed in this specific site, time, and context, taking these elements into account as I recorded and later analyzed moments of communication. I chose an ethnographic approach not only because I believed it best suited the goals of this study to observe the ways people communicate about nature when largely left to their own devices (Philipsen, 1982) but also because I am given to such focused exploration of people s means and meanings. I cannot shake my seemingly inherent need to listen and observe. It s not always enjoyable; sometimes it s even upsetting. Still, this apparently intuitive behavior has developed into a skill, one I once used as a journalist and I later developed to use as an ethnographer. Of course, ethnography is quite different from casual listening/eavesdropping or journalism, but in my experience each is an act of inquisitiveness, a basic desire to pay attention to other people s experiences and to consider their practices of communication. It was through tuning into other people s conversation I first became aware of the extent to which human-nature relations are discussed and negotiated in everyday communication. I listened on hikes, at the dog park, in aquariums, and in museums. I formalized my listening into an ethnographic exploration of communication at the zoo, studying how people spoke while looking at gorillas. And then I spent the past three years doing an ethnographic exploration of communication and whale watching. Partly because I come from a background in critical journalism, I align with attempts to bring ethnography closer to a set of critical, journalistic practices (Denzin, 1997). In this way, in the telling of the ethnography, I attempt to tell accounts that connect private experience with public issues, that strengthen our capacity to understand ourselves, and that help position the participant, reader, and researcher in the role of actor to effect meaningful and beneficial transformations. This type of ethnography also strives to move study participants from being captured and suspended in unchanging states within researcher monologue to a practice of ethnographic presence (Madison, 2005), in which, as the researcher and writer, I work to create passageways to conversations among researcher, readers, and the changing, temporal, and lively presence of participants. I do this, in part, in my write-up of participants statements and my interpretations, retaining

43 29 quoted dialogue where possible, putting participants lone statements in conversation where it might be fruitful, and including myself in participant dialogue where it might be revealing. In addition, via formatting choices, I avoid setting participants comments apart from the overall formatted narrative of the paper except in the inclusion of quotation marks; this continuity of formatting is a further attempt to include participants as storytellers in a multi-voiced story. A reflexive ethnographic exploration allowed me to be deeply attentive to the means and meanings of my participants while also remaining reflective and critical about the theoretical assumptions I brought and about my subjective positionality as a participantobserver. As such, in listening, recording, and analyzing, I maintained a focus on participants experience and communication, while at the same time I strived to remain aware of the lenses and filters I wore in my observation and interpretation. I arrived with the theoretical lens detailed in the following chapter, one informed by views of communication as a socially constructive and mediating force. This lens shaped the way I paid attention to communication I observed in the field, forefronting communication that I perceived as most illustrative of this process as it relates to naturehuman relations. At the same time, my research program is focused on questions of human-nature relations because I feel deeply connected with and concerned for the state of these relations. I also perceive that much past and current environmental destruction is based on widespread cultural disconnect from nature. This personal perception ties into my theoretical lens, which situates communication as a cultural force able to produce both gaps and bridges in human-nature relations. I also arrived as a participant observer with very little experience with whale watching and near to no knowledge about orcas, which turned out to be invaluable for my study. I had gone on one or two whale watch trips over the course of my life, but never in my research site. In addition, I had never seen orcas in the wild. As such, my views on this particular human-nature intersection were not already clearly shaped. In the course of stepping into my role of participant observer, I was able to open myself to being informed by and to learn from a range of participants with a range of views and experiences. At the

44 30 same time, I arrived with an advocacy-oriented methodology and ontology, shaped in part by a deep sense of connection with nature and a commitment to finding ways in which human-nature relations can be improved. In this way, I viewed my observations through a lens that was especially focused on understanding how communication served to mediate these relations in ways that might be regenerative for human-nature relations. Data Collection I used a snowball technique (Goodman, 1961) to identify key participants and groups in the field and initially to create research relationships with a range of participants in whale watch companies and other related organizations. In summer 2005, I began exploratory fieldwork from water and shore with Human Subjects approval. My fieldwork continued through the fall of During off-tourist season times, when the whales were far away and the whale watch industry was not operating, I read historical and contemporary texts tracing the human relationship with the site s iconic and most commonly watched marine mammals in an attempt to locate the perspectives of study participants within broader historical and social contexts 21. I also took part in a winter whale watch trip departing from Seattle and continued phone and correspondence with captains, naturalists, whale watch boat monitoring staff and volunteers, and tourist participants. Core Fieldnote Collection Sites During the three fieldwork summers, I moved onto Washington s San Juan Island. I did extensive and immersive on-site ethnographic fieldwork. I spent most days floating in the American and Canadian waters on a variety of whale watch boats or on an inflatablestyle whale watch monitoring boat. Other days I spent at public shore-based whale watch sites. I observed communication in a variety of settings, including on Vancouver Island and in Seattle, but the majority of my observation was at sites on San Juan Island and on the surrounding Canadian and American waters. My three main platforms for 21 Books written by contemporary area residents involved with the orcas that inform this study include those by whale-human jam session musician and activist Jim Nollman (Nollman, 1999), naturalist and orca telepath Mary Getten (Getten, 2002), orca researcher Alexandra Morton (Morton, 2002), and whale watch boat captain Patrick Pillsbury (Pillsbury, 2004).

45 31 observation were: Whale watch boats, Lime Kiln Point State Park (Whale Watch Park), and a monitoring boat (See Figure 2). I briefly describe these sites here. The whale watch boats were American, though I was able to constantly listen to both Canadian and U.S. captains via marine radio 22. Several whale watch companies generously allowed me to tag along as a researcher on their daily tours. The companies, ranging from those that ran 6-seater boats to those that operated large person passenger boats, were mostly based off San Juan Island. Additionally, I did participant observation with a kayak tour company based on San Juan Island. At the start of each whale watch tour, I announced my presence as a researcher and provided a basic description about my study to the passengers, giving them assurances that they would not be identified and that their participation was voluntary, and providing the option to opt out of being included in my observations (not one of the more than 400 boat-based tourists opted out). Each boat had a captain, usually at least one naturalist, and from several to dozens of tourists. In total, I observed about 30 whale watch tours (about 110 hours total). Many whale advocates argue that shore-based watching is a more ethical way to whale watch as it takes away the possible impacts of boats on the whales. My second platform was such a shore-based site. Lime Kiln Point State Park, also informally called Whale Watch Park, 23 is on the west side of San Juan Island and features a strip of coast the Southern Residents often swim by, sometimes a few hundred meters away and sometimes as close as a heart-racing meter or two off shore. Beds of bull kelp form just off the rocky shoreline, and salmon use this kelp for cover on their swim back to the rivers. The orcas push through this kelp, looking for salmon. Sometimes they hook kelp with their tails and fins and drag it along, a practice orca observers call kelping. Orca insiders 24 characterized Whale Watch Park as the best place from shore in the world to see killer whales up close in their natural environment. While shore-based 22 The whale watch industry designates a marine radio channel for communicating with one another, which they keep as secret as they can from the public. 23 For simplicity sake, I refer to the park as Whale Watch Park for the remainder of the study. 24 I use the term insider in this study to describe participants who have deep contextual knowledge of the orcas. I use the term whale watch insiders at times for captains, naturalists, and whale watch monitor

46 32 watching is considered far less intrusive on whales, it doesn t promise whale watching on demand. Instead of boats that can find the whales when they are within so many miles, it is up to the whales to decide when they will come by a given shore. Locals sometimes called the park Whale Wait Park. One local said, If you re local, you know to come here with a picnic and a book and you wait. At this site, I observed a steady flow of tourists, and the occasional volunteer docent, whale enthusiast regular, state park ranger, or whale researcher either waiting or watching from shore. If they did not spot whales, the majority of the tourists I observed stayed only a few minutes. The park has about 200,000 visitors on average a year. While the primary platform for the land-based aspect of this study was Whale Watch Park, I also observed at other public shore sites on the west and southern coasts of San Juan Island based on convenience and serendipity, depending on whether the orcas appeared when I was there. The whale watch monitoring boat platform was a non-profit environmental stewardship organization dedicated to both educating private boaters about wise boating practices around whales and monitoring and communicating with the transnational whale watch industry about adherence to voluntary whale protection boating guidelines. The monitoring boat was small with a capacity for one driver, two to three volunteers, and a bucket for toilet. As such, everyone had at least one role to fill and I was happy to participate as a volunteer. Roles I filled ranged from distributing Be Whale Wise educational brochures via an extending pole to private boaters approaching whales; to recording commercial and private whale watch vessel (including seaplane and helicopter) infractions of voluntary whale watch guidelines; to doing regular half hour boat counts around the whales and recording details about whale activity; to fishing out various beings and things from the sea, from dead seal pups for environmental monitoring, to fishing lines and plastic bags for environmental cleanup, to recently marine-mammal- staff and volunteers. I use the term orca insiders for Whale Museum staff and volunteers, whale advocates, and whale researchers.

47 33 Figure 2. Research Platforms. My research platforms included whale watch boats, Whale Watch Park, and a marine monitoring boat that monitored the whale watch industry and educated private boaters about safe boating around the whales. Clockwise from the top: A Canadian inflatable whale watch boat with orcas, a sign at Whale Watch Park, me as participant-observer on a marine monitoring boat distributing whale-safe boating guidelines to a private boater.

48 34 munched salmon chunks for research. I was a participant observer on the monitoring boat about 25 times, with several drivers and more than a dozen volunteers, with an average of 8 hours on the water each time (200 hours total). One monitoring boat driver answered a tourist s question about the organization s purpose by stating simply: We watch whale watchers. While many argued the whale watch industry was loving the whales to death, some dismissed this claim as an unhelpful cliché. The monitoring organization positioned itself to work with the whale watch industry to bring about voluntary guidelines for self-monitoring and to work to educate and monitor private boaters, shifting the emphasis to figuring out a way to love the whales wisely. One monitoring boat volunteer said: It s the classic tragedy of the commons thing, because there are no laws, so everybody can do just what they want to do. We re really looking for long-term consciousness change, for people to understand the whales, their range, their lives, the whole marine environment, so they can develop a marine ethic. At a bottom line, the monitoring organization was concerned with bringing about perceptual change in human-nature relations that would lead to different practices of these relations, what some personnel called a cultural shift. A cultural shift takes time, but the monitoring boat s presence on the water with the whale watch industry has proven to be effective in shifting behavior 25. With little to no governmental enforcement on the water, the monitoring boat provided oversight and interaction in way in which the industry and private boaters were made aware of their direct participation in human-orca relations. Fieldnote Acquisition At night, I typed up often soggy fieldnotes; that is, until I switched to waterproof paper notebooks. I gathered more than 1,000 typed single-spaced pages of observed communication from a wide spectrum of more than 700 people on site. In addition to the 25 One study showed that compliance with voluntary guidelines by commercial operators regarding distance offshore was about 80% when vessels were not monitored, but more than 90% when the monitoring boat was present. Compliance by recreational whale watchers was much lower, but also improved when the monitoring boat was present (Bain et al., 2002).

49 35 core data of observed face-to-face communication, I also attended public meetings, conducted formal interviews, and collected cultural artifacts (such as whale watch company brochures and signs, photographs of environmental education signage, and discourse from both whale watch marketing and associated whale non-profit web sites) (See Figure 3). The majority of the fieldnotes, about 800 pages, comprise observations of people communicating on their own accord about whales, whale watching, and nature in one of the study s three main platforms. The remaining 200-plus pages of fieldnotes are of communication by people at area scientific or governmental meetings or public lectures about orca whales in the region; transcriptions of educational signage and video at places on site such San Juan Island s Whale Museum or Whale Watch Park s interpretive center; and interviews with several key site participants with whom I conducted hour or longer interviews. I worked with nine undergraduate research assistants over four quarters, who assisted in transcribing recorded interviews, public meetings, lectures, and signage. To inform my research practices in the field and during analysis, as well as to argue for the validity of fieldnotes and analysis, I followed Philipsen s (personal communication, February 25, 2003) recommendations and gave careful attention to my methods of data collection, my preparation for observation and materials transformation, my attempts to prevent bias or interference, my perspectives taken in collecting and transforming materials, the precision of my reports and transformations of fieldnotes, and reliability. In conducting interviews in the field, I heeded Briggs (1986) warnings and gave careful attention to interview design to avoid questions that overly framed or shaped interviewees communication, and I addressed validity by conducting interviews with the goal being to hear how people communicated in their own roles, patterns, and meaning systems. In further discussing the study s methods of validity checking, I offer a metaphor of creating a structure that is sound enough for me and others to stand on. To build this structure, I also turned to conceptual validity terms that emphasize the authenticity,

50 Figure 3. Written and Visual Texts. Above are sample images of some of the written and visual texts included in this study. Pictured at the top is one of the outdoor educational signs at Whale Watch Park. Pictured below are three area whale watch company brochures. 36

51 37 ethics, and significance of one s work. Lincoln and Guba (2000) offer the concept of validity as authenticity to replace the construct of validity as objectivity, which they describe as a mythological creature that never existed (p. 181). In contrast, validity as authenticity has as its criteria fairness, ontological and educative authenticity, and catalytic and tactical authenticity. The study addresses fairness by including the voices of a wide range of participants and by treating diverse voices with balance, thereby attempting to prevent marginalization. The study addresses ontological and educative authenticity by attempting to be transparent about my question and motivations behind the research, as well as by engaging participants in the process through their voices in the written work and in reflection on the research in progress 26. Lastly, Lincoln and Guba offer the validity concept of catalytic and tactical authenticity, which refers to the ability of a given inquiry to prompt, first, action on the part of research participants, and second, the involvement of the researcher/evaluator in training participants in specific forms of social and political action (p. 181). In addressing catalytic authenticity, the proposed study may prompt action by illuminating aspects of communication about human-nature relations, leading participants and readers to see manners of themselves and their societies of which perhaps they had not been formerly aware and which they might decide to strategically change or emphasize (See Chapter 5). I can begin to account for tactical authenticity at this point as the community I have worked with recently asked me to run a workshop on communication for whale watch naturalists in March 2007, in which I presented elements of my research and facilitated discussion about ways to communicate that engage and empower tourists to be advocates on the part of orcas and the environment. Petronio (2002) proposes five validity measures to make scholarly research more accessible to people not in academia: experience, responsive, relevance, cultural, and tolerance validity. The study addresses experience validity, reflecting participants lived experience by locating their positions within the frames of history, personal practices, and 26 This reflection has taken place in conversations along the way with a few key participants and, more formally, it took place when I recently presented some of my work to area whale watch naturalists.

52 38 culture as they enact communication; experience validity sensitizes my work to the larger issues and contextual forces that affect communication. By focusing on the pressing issue of human relations with nature, this study is responsive to societal needs. In addressing relevance validity, this study focuses on everyday communication in an out-of-theordinary human-nature intersection, which can allow for the possibility of its findings translating into something many individuals can use in their everyday world to illuminate communication s role in environmental perceptions and practices. This study also strives for cultural validity by making culture a critical emphasis. Lastly, I address tolerance validity by giving voice to a variety of views that emphasize participants values, principles, and standards, both similar and different from my own. At the same time, as a participant observer, ethnographic methods allowed me to critically reflect upon my experience vis-à-vis the subject of the inquiry, which permitted me to have and reflexively use the subjective voice as one of many sources of insight (Philipsen, 1982). My data gathering and analytical methods have been informed from the start by including this subjective voice. In the case of the proposed study, such methods allowed me to observe and analyze participants talk about nature while reflexively recognizing my own role as researcher in the constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing of participants communication, and my own role as participant as an interlocutor within much of that communication. Participants In this section, I briefly describe the majority of participants in this study, who were of four particular kinds: whale watch industry owners, staff, and volunteers; whale watch tourists; monitoring organization staff and volunteers, and orcas. Whale Watch Industry owners, staff, and volunteers provided the discursive framework within which visitors experienced their encounters. Captains included former commercial fishermen, ranch hands, teachers, truck drivers, and factory managers, and ranged from new captains to old timers and from company owners to employees. Some captains had shifted their boats to biodiesel and others were known for especially loud boat engines. Some were known to be especially ethical in their practices and some were not. Many of the captains described

53 39 a personal connection they felt to the Southern Resident orcas. Many also spoke of a bond among whale watch operators ( We do have real sweet comradery among the captains. I think we re the targets, but we work really hard to protect the whales. We don t want them to die. People think it s about the money and there are some owners who make a lot of dollars, but a lot of the captains <chuckles> we re out here because of the passion. ) Where captains served generally as drivers and sometimes as guides 27, taking tourists to the whales, naturalists served as a type of translator between nature and human, interpreting particular meanings of nature and specifically of whales for tourists. Naturalist, who were mostly staff with some volunteer assistant naturalists, had different styles of communicating with tourists that ranged from deeply reflective or informative ( The concept of dominance is so intrinsic to our species, so to be observing animals, orcas, that don t have the dominance thing is an amazing thing ), to a focus on facts given via stories and sometimes humor ( As you get off the boat today you are going to have to tell me a fact you didn t know before today ), to very little interaction and only answering the rare question ( I don t usually talk until someone asks a question ). Naturalists included retired or current teachers, students, blue-collar workers, people who held multiple jobs, and the independently wealthy. Most naturalists lived on the islands and some had deep and long ties. Many had been naturalists for years and were certified through naturalist training; less commonly, assistant naturalists were college students doing the job during their summer vacations. Naturalist training is required by the WWOA-NW, but how that training is given is not defined and training can range from in-depth certification courses to brief trainings given by some companies. The naturalists most respected by their peers were those most reflective about the goals of their work. One such respected senior naturalist spoke of how tourists will usually start to interpret for themselves. Like one person will say, Looks like they re having a marital tiff or That s his mate. And then another person will chime in and add to the story. They will make up a whole story that is entirely inaccurate. That s why I 27 Captains, especially those on small boats, at times also wore the hat of naturalist. Kayak guides always wore the hats of both guide and naturalist.

54 40 don t let them sink into their reverie for too long here. So, I m trying to adjust the interpretation. In this way, naturalists were not just interpreters of nature for tourists, but were also involved in adjusting existing and emerging interpretations tourists had while with nature. On kayaks, where naturalists also served as guides in charge of teaching novices how to kayak and of survival aspects of tourists experiences with nature, their work sometimes involved a shift in their own experience with nature. One kayak guide/naturalist said: It s odd, in this job, I don t have the time to be really in nature. I don t have the time to connect. Instead, I m paying attention to facilitating other people s experience. I hope that I am helping them connect through what I say and how I say it. While this naturalist explains her own experience as not giving her the time to be really in nature, she also typifies other roles of the naturalist, including the widely held notion on site that the naturalist s work was to facilitate tourist experiences and to help them connect with nature. In particular, this naturalist highlights the role of communication in these tasks ( through what I say and how I say it. ) Tourists were international, though mostly American, and were watching on water and land (See Figure 4). The average $65 per head cost of a boat tour was prohibitive to many. Getting to the island for shore-based watching was expensive on its own with the high cost of island ferry tickets and accommodation. Tourist types and experiences varied, but due to the costs involved in attaining the whale watch experience, most were middle to upper-middle class. Some tourists described their reasons for taking the tour as something they thought they should do because they were visiting the Pacific Northwest and some described planning their trip to the Northwest because they wanted to see wild orcas. For many tourists, it was their first time seeing wild orcas, and for some seeing any type of wild whale. A minority of the tourist participants had taken whale watch tours on site before or made Whale Watch Park their regular summer destination. There are many ways one could refer to these participants, such as visitors, passengers, customers, travelers, etc. In addition, for some, the term tourist has pejorative connotations. I chose, however, to refer to these participants consistently as

55 41 tourists for purposes of continuity and accuracy (for instance, not all tourists were passengers, nor were all tourists paying customers), of differentiation (tourists differed from other participants who had significant connections to both the place and the whales of the case study), of reflecting the most consistently used term across a range of whale insiders and tourists themselves, and of representing most closely their activity at the time I observed them (largely watching whales or hoping to watch whales either from boats or shore-based sites). Where it is especially relevant, I differentiate between one-time tourists and repeat whale watch tourists, or between tourists on their first whale watch trip and tourists who took part in a more engaged volunteer whale research experience. As mentioned, participants used other terms in addition to tourist. One term I heard only once, but that connoted a very different human-whale experience was one kayak guide s conscious use of the term participants for her paying customers on the kayak trips. While I would not try to typify the several hundred tourists I observed on water and land, whale watch insiders often spoke of differences in tourists they encountered in terms of types. One naturalist said, There are 4 types: There are the picture takers, those are a different breed; there are the question askers, the type that hounds me with question after question the entire trip; there are the experiential people who are just like, Oh my god, this is beautiful; and there are the sea sick ones. Some insiders differentiated tourists by months, with July and August bringing the types they least enjoyed, tourists one captain termed the gimmee tourists: Everyone s trying to squeeze in that last vacation. They re really the gimmee group. So we give them what they want and we let them go. Another captain said, In July and August, people come here with the express purpose, they are on a mission, to see whales. And they come with their kids. That s a lot of pressure. Whale watch insiders, however, did not characterize tourists in exclusively unfavorable terms. For instance, naturalists, captains, and marine monitors often identified those tourists they most enjoyed as the May and September tourists. Captain: In May and September, people come here to be here. Similarly, insiders favorably and unfavorably differentiated between tourists who were real whale watchers, defined by one captain as people who will stand out in the rain for two hours in four foot seas, and

56 42 the other extreme, those who want to see an orca so they can say they saw an orca and they don t care. The latter type was portrayed by insiders as treating the orcas as just another tourist attraction or another notch on the vacation belt. Although I observed the majority of tourist participants on whale watch boats or at Whale Watch Park, I also observed some tourists on their own private boats during interactions on the whale watch monitoring boat when we passed them boating guidelines. Private boaters tended to be on yachts or sailboats and to be Canadian or American. Private boater behavior ranged from respectful of the whales in giving them distance to aggressively pursuing the whales and sometimes driving their boats through or over whales. For most of the private boaters, the experience was part of a pleasure or fishing outing and they tended to have happened upon the orcas. Because of the nature of the observation, every time I observed tourists on private boats, they were with orcas. Whale watch industry participants tended to express animosity about these boaters based on repeated experiences of private boaters not knowing or not following whale watch safety guidelines. Socio-economic class was often part of whale watch operators communication on the marine radio channel (most likely not listened to by most private boaters) when they would commiserate over private boaters who behaved in either oblivious or aggressive ways toward the orcas (E.g., The big big yachty yachty s driving over them, We ve got a three-level gin palace running down the whales. I didn t bring my harpoon gun today. ) While many private boaters interacted with the monitoring boat, private boaters also sometimes ignored, waved away, or even acted aggressively toward the monitoring boat. One monitoring boat driver termed this latter reaction a symptom of Captainitis, a word he used to humorously describe an affliction of macho disregard the largely male population of boat captains got when behind the wheel of a boat. Inexperience and/or alcohol may also have played a role in some of the more aggressive private boater behavior toward the whales and the monitoring boat. One local private boater said: Some of the bigger boats, the yachts, are being driven by people who ve never even been on a boat before. Then they buy one and think there is nothing to it, just taking a

57 Figure 4. Tourist Participants. Study participants included whale watch boat passengers (above) and visitors to Whale Watch Park (below). 43