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“It was easy,” remembered Ted Griffin, the man who first brought captive performing killer whales to the world, with his capture of Namu, a northern resident orca for his aquarium on the downtown Seattle waterfront.

Griffin arrived in Seattle on July 28, 1965, with Namu in tow, to a hero’s welcome.

While Namu was his first orca capture, Griffin was just getting started, pursuing orcas in Puget Sound with high-speed chase boats, seal bombs and helicopters.

He deeply grieved Namu’s death; the whale lived less than a year in captivity, ultimately dying because of the untreated sewage and other pollution in Elliott Bay.

It was seeing Namu up close — and all the other orcas ultimately put on display — that changed people’s thinking about the whale once called killer.