September 16, 2015
MEDIA CONTACT
Melissa Malott, Citizens for a Healthy Bay, mmalott@healthybay.org, (253) 383-2429
ORCA TOUR 2015: KILLER WHALE EXPERT AND
AUTHOR ERICH HOYT TO VISIT TACOMA
TACOMA – Internationally-renowned author and killer whale expert Erich Hoyt will speak in Tacoma as part of “Orca Tour 2015”. The presentation is hosted by local nonprofit Citizens for a Healthy Bay (CHB), the University of Washington Tacoma (UWT) and The Whale Trail. Hoyt’s talk, titled “Adventures with Orcas in the North Pacific”, will take place on Sunday, October 11th at UWT’s Carwein Hall at 2 pm. Tickets for the talk are available through BrownPaper Tickets, brownpapertickets.com (search Orca Tour 2015).
“Orca Tour 2015” celebrates the seasonal return of the endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales to central Puget Sound and builds awareness of the whales throughout their range in the Salish Sea and along the Pacific Coast. This transboundary tour is especially timely with the birth of the fifth calf in the Southern Resident Killer Whale pods since December 2014.
“We are so lucky to live in a place as beautiful as the Puget Sound with animals as fascinating as orcas,” said CHB Executive Director Melissa Malott. “Orca populations are a great representation of the health of the Puget Sound, which we at Citizens for a Healthy Bay are working to protect. We are excited to have Erich Hoyt speak to learn more about these amazing creatures and our environment.”
Erich Hoyt’s first killer whale expedition to Johnstone Strait sailed from Victoria, BC in June 1973. He proceeded to spend parts of the next 10 summers with orcas, culminating in his now classic book Orca: The Whale Called Killer. He is the author of 22 books including The Earth Dwellers and Marine Protected Areas for Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises. His most recent book is the greatly expanded Creatures of the Deep, with state-of-the-art photographs and stories of amazing species new to science.
In 1999 Hoyt, a Whale and Dolphin Conservation Research Fellow, co-founded the Far East Russia Orca Project (FEROP) to learn more about orca pods targeted for aquarium captures and to get Russian students involved in science and conservation of killer whales in Russian waters. Now in its 15th year, FEROP has recorded the Russian pods and photo-IDed some 1500 orcas off Kamchatka and in the Commander Islands — including three white orcas found so far in the study areas.
“We are living in an era and in a part of the world where whale research has exploded,” said Hoyt. “And we’ve got some amazing orca stories to tell here—mostly positive, some heartbreaking, but all compelling.”
For more information on Orca Tour 2015, go to: orcatour.org. To discuss event sponsorships, please contact Citizens for a Healthy Bay at (253) 383-2429 or chb@healthybay.org.
Celebrating its twenty-fifth year, Citizens for a Healthy Bay is an environmental organization whose mission is to represent and engage citizens in the cleanup, restoration and protection of Commencement Bay, the surrounding waters and our natural habitat.
Citizens for a Healthy Bay was formed in 1990 to represent Tacoma citizens in the Superfund cleanup of Commencement Bay – at the time one of the most polluted bodies of water in the country. Thanks to the efforts of CHB and the community, parts of the bay that were once dead zones due to industrial waste are now recovering.
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