The Whale Museum

In the late 1960s Ken Balcomb, Camille Goebel, and Rick Chandler created a small organization called the Moclips Cetalogical Society, based in Moclips, Washington, for the purpose of studying whales. In 1976, the society moved to San Juan Island to study orcas. With a contract from the National Marine Fisheries Service, the organization began the Orca Survey to research the Southern Resident Community of orcas. As a result of this and other studies, the American and Canadian governments agreed to stop live-capture operations. Numerous volunteers, including former director Dr. Richard Osborne, took part in those early studies. In 1978 Balcomb, as president of the Moclips Cetalogical Society, joined together with fellow whale researcher Mark Anderson to find a building to create a museum about whales. They rented the upstairs of the historic Odd Fellows Hall in Friday Harbor, for $75 a month. The Museum is still there. For the next several months hundreds of volunteers worked miracles to refurbish the building and create exhibits for a grand opening in the summer of 1979. Anderson became the first director of the Museum, and a board of directors was established. The Moclips Cetalogical Society retained its board, with its members also sitting on the board of The Whale Museum. In 1981 the two boards merged.