Showing results by narrator "Mark Leiren-Young" in All Categories

The fascinating and heartbreaking account of the first publicly exhibited captive killer whale a story that forever changed the way we see orcas and sparked the movement to save them. Killer whales had always been seen as bloodthirsty sea monsters. That all changed when a young killer whale was captured off the west coast of North America and displayed to the public in 1964. Moby Doll, as the whale became known, was an instant celebrity, drawing 20,000 visitors on the one and only day he was exhibited.

Orcas Everywhere looks at how humans around the world (Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike) related to orcas in the past, how we relate to them now, and what we can do to keep cetacean communities alive and thriving. Writer, filmmaker, and orca activist Mark Leiren-Young takes us back to when killer whales were considered monsters, and examines how humans went from using orcas for target practice to nearly loving them to death.

The night Mark Leiren-Young drove into Williams Lake, British Columbia, in 1985 to work as a reporter for the venerable Williams Lake Tribune, he arrived on the scene of an armed robbery. And that was before things got weird. For a 22-year-old from Vancouver, a stint in the legendary Cariboo town was a trip to another world and another era.