Alexandra Morton

Alexandra Bryant Hubbard was born on July 13, 1957, in Sharon, Connecticut. In her memoir, Listening to Whales, she said of her birthplace, "I can't imagine a more whaleless environment."[1] Her father was an artist and her mother a writer. Hubbard said that her passion for animals came from the time when she would explore the woods with her brother. In 1977, Morton started working with psychonaut John C. Lilly as a volunteer in the Human/Dolphin Society. She catalogued 2,000 audio recordings of bottlenose dolphins. She then graduated with a diploma from the American University.[2]

While in California, Morton studied the communications of dolphins at Marineland of the Pacific in Palos Verdes. When she realized there were too many individuals in the tanks and that bottlenose dolphins were too quick to record their behaviour, Morton decided to shift her study towards Marineland's pair of killer whales, Orky and Corky, whom she had previously called "boring" because they spent long periods of time floating at the surface while calling back and forth to each other. Morton observed the pair when the female gave birth to the first orca conceived in captivity. She was interested in studying how baby orcas acquired new language. However, the calf died and none of Corky's other babies survived more than 45 days. Following the passing of each of the calves Morton recorded from Corky a behaviour that closely resembled mourning. The young mother lay on the bottom of the tank repeating the same calls over and over, stopping only to gulp another breath of air. The calls became raspy as the whale vocalized day and night. Morton also discovered that orcas invented games to distract themselves. One, the "Double Layout", consisted in Orky and Corky lying on their backs, putting their flukes on the platform next to the tank and raising their right flipper simultaneously. The most interesting behavior was the dawn greeting where both whales pressed their tongues against the tank wall where the first shaft of sunlight hit.

In 1979, Morton contacted pioneering killer whale researcher Michael Bigg who told her Corky and Orky had come from A5 Pod in northwestern British Columbia. He knew this from photographs of their capture as he could see the terrified young Corky pressed against the side of her mother. Dr. Bigg had photos of Corky's mother and her sisters and he knew they visited Johnstone Strait every summer near Alert Bay, BC. Morton spent her summer there and found A5 pod as well as other killer whale families. The next summer, she returned to British Columbia and met Robin Morton. Alexandra Morton then permanently shifted her study to wild killer whales. Morton and her husband moved onto a boat so that they could easily follow whales. To support their work, Alexandra and her husband rented out their boat for tourists and researchers. In 1984, while following the A12 matriline in Northeastern Vancouver Island, Morton came across the village of Echo Bay, British Columbia, in the Broughton Archipelago.[3] She and her husband decided to settle there to pursue their study of wild killer whales.

Net-pen salmon farms arrived in British Columbia in the 1970s but began to proliferate by the late 1980s. By 2000, 90% of salmon farms in the province were Norwegian owned and contained Atlantic salmon. Since then, the salmon farming industry has grown, notably in the Broughton Archipelago. In the mid-2000s corporate giant Mitsubishi bought Cermaq, a company operating many salmon farms in BC.[8]

Morton began to study the effects salmon farming brings to the coast of British Columbia, particularly to wild salmon populations, which experienced major declines in the years following the introduction of salmon farms in the area.

On May 12, 2015, Morton, as Director of Pacific Coast Wild Salmon Society, released a 24-page booklet, Salmon Confidential: The ugly truth about Canada's open-net salmon farms. The booklet makes the case that the wild-salmon-focused economy of British Columbia far outweighs the contributions of salmon farms. The booklet explores the issues of sea lice, impacts on lobster fisheries, challenges to bio-security, salmon viruses, exotic species, and the local economy.

In the spring of 2010, Morton helped found the social movement Salmon Are Sacred to raise awareness of the value of salmon to society.[9]

In Dec 2020, Morton's research contributed to a decision by Canada's federal fisheries and oceans department to phase out all salmon farms in the narrow passages between Vancouver Island and the mainland, as their diseases were found to be decimating the native wild Pacific salmon with sea lice and viruses. [10]

• A4 Pod
• A5 Pod
• List of Northern Resident Killer Whale Pods

• Official website
• Raincoast Research Society