Luna (killer Whale) - Death

Death

On March 10, 2006, what many warned was inevitable, happened—Luna approached a boat he had grown familiar with, the ocean tugboat General Jackson in Nootka Sound. It is believed that Luna went up to the tugboat intentionally, as he often did, to engage in playful activity. Apparently underestimating the power of the vessel—tugboats have much more powerful engines than other ships of their size—Luna was pulled into the blades and subsequently killed.

Luna's death was met with both anger and frustration. Michael Harris of Orca Conservancy, which since 2001 had led the campaign to force the hand of the Canadian government to intervene on behalf of Luna, was particularly outspoken about DFO's failure to enforce laws that should have restricted public access to the orca and prevented private citizens the opportunity to interact with the whale and further acclimate it to humans and boats. Harris also criticized DFO more broadly for its gross negligence throughout the crisis and in the end its failure to rescue and repatriate a critical member of an endangered transboundary population of killer whales.

"This is the Katrina of orca advocacy," Harris said. "We saw a perfect storm gathering, and they sat around and did nothing, and now we've got a dead whale! It's incredibly tragic and frustrating."

After Luna's death, a spokesperson for the DFO said that it never gave up on the idea of reuniting Luna with his pod, and had "always considered" the option to have one or more boats lead Luna out of Nootka Sound.

Luna's mother, Splash, went missing in 2008 and was presumed to have died at the age of 33. Luna's six-year-old younger brother Aurora (L101), also went missing and was presumed dead that year. Splash had been showing signs of starvation, probably due to declines in Chinook salmon stocks, the main prey species for resident killer whales.