“All Hell Broke Loose”
On the morning of Sunday, March 7, 1976, Ralph and Karen Munro were still feeling the effects of the previous night’s Tartan Ball. Over coffee, the couple chatted briefly about a newspaper editorial: apparently Sea World was trying to catch killer whales in Puget Sound. Although Ralph was special aide to Republican governor Dan Evans, the couple gave the matter little thought as they prepared to go sailing that afternoon with Bill and Pennie Oliver. Leaving from Olympia, the friends enjoyed a leisurely cruise to Cooper Point and were returning south through Budd Inlet at 3:00 p.m. when they spotted orcas off their port side. When Oliver tacked the thirty-three-foot vessel eastward for a look, Karen grew nervous. Would killer whales attack the boat? “I didn’t know anything about them at that time,” she later noted, “and the name sounded kind of scary.” Ralph reassured her. He had followed the story of Ted Griffin and Namu a decade earlier, and like many Northwesterners he now viewed the species with fondness. But the pleasure boaters quickly realized the whales weren’t alone. In pursuit were the seiner Pacific Maid and a smaller vessel named Orca. The reaction on the sailboat was visceral. “All of a sudden we realized that they were trying to capture these whales,” Karen recalled. “They were going to take our whales away.” Oliver radioed the Coast Guard, but officers responded that they lacked jurisdiction, and when he approached a floating seaplane for help, the pilot said that he was part of the operation. By that time, the animals were cornered in nearby Butler Cove. Determined to intervene, Oliver started his engines and steered into the melee. “Stay away!” yelled the men aboard the Pacific Maid. “We’ve got a permit!” But Oliver ignored them, and at first the intervention seemed to work. The whales made a break to the north, but the boats cut them off, driving the animals to the east side of Budd Inlet just off Gull Harbor. The two capture vessels set their nets, and then came the seal bombs.