Male orcas have large dorsal fins.
The Makah hunt, reviving a tradition thousands of years old, is to take place some time after Oct. 1 off Neah Bay off Washington's Olympic Peninsula. The Makah stopped whaling in the 1920s after commercial whalers decimated the gray-whale population in the quest for whale oil once used in lamps. The tribe in 1994 moved to resume hunts after gray whales were removed from the Endangered Species List. A take of five grays each year through 2002 was approved last year by the International Whaling Commission. The tactic has worked in the past to warn whales, he said.