Former Killer Whale Catcher Turned Conservationist Discusses Career Change
WHITFIELD: Tonight at 7:00 eastern CNN will show an encore presentation of "Black Fish" the story of a SeaWorld trainer killed by a 12,000 pound orca in 2010. The film gained international attention for the way it challenged the concept of keeping killer whales for entertainment. CNN's Ivan Watson spoke to a man who spent two decades capturing killer whales and now rescues them.</s>IVAN WATSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It is the unmistakable sound of fear coming from one of the world's largest predators, a young killer whale effectively screaming just hours after being captured from the wild. So traumatized and disoriented, the animal can't even swim after its journey from the ocean to this small pool. This rare never seen before video of killer whales captured near Iceland in the 1980s is being shared for the first time with CNN by Jeff Foster, a man who masterminded the capture of many killer whales. How many years were you actually capturing killer whales?</s>FOSTER: For me it was from 1972 to 1990.</s>WATSON: That's a long career.</s>JEFF FOSTER, FORMER WHALE CATCHER: Yes.</s>WATSON: How many of the killer whales do you think you captured?</s>FOSTER: Couple dozen, probably, total.</s>WATSON: A couple dozen with all of them going marine parks like SeaWorld. Are killer whales big business?</s>FOSTER: Oh, absolutely. Killer whales are the most expensive animals in the world outside of racehorses. So they are worth millions of dollars. And of course the amount of people who like to see these animals in captivity, there's a huge demand for that.</s>WATSON: Foster started his career as a teenager here in Seattle, which was the birth place of the captive killer whale industry. In 1976 a ban on capturing orcas in Washington state along with the growing public outcry in the U.S. against the practice forced Foster and his colleagues to move their operations to Iceland. There they snatched young whales from the frigid waters of the Atlantic Ocean and domesticated and trained them for eventual sale to marine parks in the U.S., France, and Japan. Over time Foster says he got more and more uncomfortable with ripping wild killer whales from their families in the sea.</s>FOSTER: There's a cry like a baby's crying. And so yes, you know, it tugged at your heart.</s>WATSON: Over the last 20 years foster has gone from being a hunter to a rescuer of marine mammals.</s>FOSTER: Hi, Thomas.</s>WATSON: We first met Foster two years ago in Turkey when he led a back to the wild project that rehabilitated two abused dolphins and released them into the Aegean Sea. He has worked on similar rescue projects with the killer whale Springer who was found lost and disoriented in the Puget Sound, and with Keiko, star of the film "Free Willy," who survived for a short time in the wild after spending decades in captivity. But two years ago Foster got a tempting offer to return to opportunity. He was offered $7 million to capture killer whales off of the pacific coast of Russia. Ivan Watson, CNN, Seattle.</s>WHITFIELD: So does Jeff Foster take that $7 million offer to return to the hunt? We'll have the answer after this.