Waves of Compassion

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'It was magic,' recalls Hunter. 'Everything and everyone we needed to pull this off just appeared, like Mel, out of the ether. I was literally sitting in my office trying to figure out how to make a film of the voyage when Michael Chechik phoned.' The young film producer, who now runs Omni Films in Vancouver, arranged for cameramen Fred Easton and Ron Precious to document the voyage.

Lawyer Hamish Bruce abandoned his law practice to work full time as he witnessed the manifestation of his Green Panthers vision. Bruce was the spiritual leader, chief of the 'Mystics.' He rarely spoke, but when he did, everyone shut up and listened. The head 'Mechanic' was electrician Al Hewitt, engineer and radio operator for the voyage, who fashioned a homemade radio-directional finder for tracking Soviet ships. Environmentalist writer and researcher Walrus Oakenbough was crew cook. In anticipation of contact with the whalers, Taeko Miwa and George Korotva were our Japanese and Russian interpreters. Dr. Myron MacDonald was our medic. Now a Ph.D. in ecology, Patrick Moore was our scientist. Carlie Trueman was the Zodiac expert, and Paul Watson was a Zodiac operator. Experimental musician Will Jackson came up from San Francisco with his Moog synthesizer to support the whale communications. Hunter was our campaign leader, and Cormack was our captain.

Bobbie Innes and Rod Marining stayed in Vancouver to run the office and media relations. On April 27, 1975 The Great Whale Conspiracy headed out of Vancouver's English Bay, flying the UN and Canadian flags, a Kwakiutl image of a whale on our sail, and a flag of the earth snapping in the breeze at the top of the mast. 'We Are Whales' blared from the speakers with Mel playing guitar on the hatch cover, 23,000 people waving goodbye from the shoreline, and Hamish Bruce standing at the bow, long golden hair whirling in the gusts of wind. We headed up the west coast of Vancouver Island to Winter Harbour, and then out to sea to find whales and whalers.

We tested our Zodiac skills when we came across wild orcas near Bella Bella in the inside passage. In mid-May we met migrating grey whales in Wickininish Bay near the remote fishing village of Ucleulet. Jazz musician Paul Winter joined us as we stayed with the whales, played music to them, and listened for their response. They seemed less interested in us than we were in them, but the whales were clearly curious, bobbing about our little inflatable boats, gazing at us with enormous eyes. The experience inspired us and provided a story for the media. The information from Spong in Norway suggested that the whalers would be at the Mendocino Ridge sea mounts in June, some 40 miles off the coast of California. The time had come, and we headed south, listening for Russian or Japanese voices on the marine radio.

On the morning of midsummer's day the Phyllis Cormack, rocked pacifically over the Mendocino sea mounts, where the ocean floor rises and sperm whales feed. We twice heard Russian voices on the radio and fixed their position with Hewitt's crude RDF only to discover that they were Soviet draggers. The ocean seemed unspeakably vast. The sea mounts run for hundreds of miles. We drifted to save fuel, listened, and watched for whales from high in the rigging.

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