On Puget Sound, It's Orca vs. Inc.

"I know it sounds kooky," Munro, 63, said during a break at a recent public hearing on the plan to make Puget Sound a protected zone, "but I can show you 10 people in this room who have had mystical experiences with orcas."

(It is a linguistic tic of the debate over these marine mammals that supporters of the endangered species listing tend to call them orcas, while opponents of the listing tend to call them killer whales.) Munro's special encounter, he said, occurred seven year ago after the death of Ralph, an orca that was named for Munro to honor his efforts to halt the live capture of the whales from Puget Sound for aquatic shows.

According to several eyewitness accounts, just as Munro began to deliver a eulogy for his deceased namesake, a large scrum of orcas -- from all three pods based in Puget Sound -- converged in the waters beside the park, where they jumped and frolicked for hours.

The emotional appeal of killer whales in the green-leaning Puget Sound region is difficult to overstate. Local news coverage borders on the obsessive. Ralph's 1999 funeral was covered by three local television stations, Munro said. The accidental death this year of Luna, a 6-year-old orphan orca killed by a tugboat propeller, occasioned widespread news coverage and op-ed hand-wringing.

The human-orca bond is explained partly by proximity and partly by behavior. Resident killer whales spend about three-quarters of their lives in and around Puget Sound, where they are easily and often viewed. Ferry riders see them regularly. And their mom-centric, family-centered lifestyle is all but irresistible.

Indeed, a rock-solid family life and a salmon-dominated diet distinguish resident killer whales from their rather less lovable killer-whale cousins -- the transients. These genetically distinct orcas tend to ignore fish and feed almost exclusively on seals, sea lions, dolphins and other marine mammals. They do not have predictable family lives and only occasionally put in an appearance in Northwest waters, where they rarely mix and never interbreed with the resident whales.

Even if you ignore the orcas' anthropomorphic charms, marine mammal researchers say there are sound, self-interested reasons for human beings to support the Endangered Species Act as a way to prevent the extinction of resident killer whales.

"Cleaning up the toxins" that accumulate in the fat of killer whales "is good for seafood eaters," said David Bain, a marine biologist who has studied killer whales for three decades. "It is also good for people who want clean water."

To draw an analogy between protecting killing whales and protecting owls is false and misleading, Bain argued, because scientists clearly know how to ensure the survival of the whales -- by increasing salmon runs and reducing industrial toxins in Puget Sound.

Resident orcas, scientists say, are not a threat to the region's booming economy. They are expert at staying away from large ships and ferry traffic in Puget Sound. Heavy industrial shipping traffic is not regarded as a threat to their survival, barring major oil spills.

One threat, though, is loving them too much. Recent research has found that whale-watching vessels -- if they crowd the animals -- induce stress and reduce their efficiency in catching salmon.

Aboard the Island Adventure II, a whale-watching boat based in Anacortes, Wash., the pilot tried during a recent five-hour cruise to stay at least 100 yards from J-pod.

He succeeded for the most part, except when Oreo and some of her gregarious kin swam toward the boat to wow tourists by breaching, slapping their flippers on the water and spy-hopping (a head-out-of-water feat similar to a human treading water).

"They are just so social," said Ellen Newberry, who works on the boat as a naturalist and has a degree in marine biology from the University of Maine. "I have seen mothers toss their babies out of the water with their snouts. Young males show us the salmon they just caught. I get they feeling they are all just trying to show off."