For Scientific American Science Quickly, I'm Kendra Peer Lewis in for Rachel Feldman.
If you're of a certain generation,
you might be able to trace your affinity for Urgas to repeated viewings of a certain movie.
The summon on 1993 film, Free Willy.
That movie led to a Herculean effort that would eventually rope in the U.S.
Air Force to rescue the movie's star, an orca named Keiko from captivity.
It also cemented the idea of orcas as intelligent,
curious animals who deserve to live outside of captivity.
Many of the orcas who ended up in aquariums in zoos came from an area in the Pacific Northwest off of the San Juan Islands.
This summer,
some members of the Scientific American team headed out there to see how the animals are faring.
To tell us a bit about what they found,
we're joined by Kelso Harper, senior multimedia editor and whale aficionado here at Siam.
Oh, whale aficionado.
I don't know if I can claim that title, but the people I spoke to certainly can.
You went to the San Juan Islands.
Can you tell me a little bit about that experience?
Yeah, definitely.
So the San Juan Islands are a little archipelago off the coast of the Pacific Northwest,
kind of nestled in the Salish Sea near Seattle and Vancouver.