MIAMI — When KING 5 spoke with Joe Olson in May, he shared how audio recordings helped reunite orca Springer with her family years ago -- and how they could play a role in Tokitae's journey.
In August, he was focused on supporting next steps for Tokitae -- and was on a trip to help prepare her for the move when he learned of her passing.
"I had flown down here to set up the hydrophone system, and they also had an underwater speaker and I was going to make sure that was working right as well," Olson said. "I flew in and she died one hour before I landed...It just hit me in the heart, and by the time I got to my hotel I was in shock and I was devastated."
He says just a few weeks ago, he was in the San Juan Islands area gathering ambient sounds of the place where Toki was likely to move. He captured sounds of the environment such as wave noise and boats going by, and traveled to Miami on Friday hoping to prepare an underwater speaker so she could listen and get used to them. He also hoped to record Toki's voice.
"We were gonna start being able to listen to her and record her voice, and hear what she is vocalizing, how she's vocalizing," Olson said. "I think that it's important for everybody to have a voice, to hear Toki's voice just would have been profound. That's the thing I think that really hurts me so deeply- that we never got a chance to hear Toki's voice."
Olson is hopeful that Toki's story - which resonated with so many people - will inspire people to get involved with protecting and restoring the entire environment.
"For me at least, that singular connection with Tokitae, also then radiates to the entire planet, and to the ecosystems that support the animals," Olson said. "My hope is that Toki's legacy is that really everybody starts taking more action to protect the entire planet - to work with protecting their own ecosystems, and in doing so they help to protect the entire planet, and that goes back to protecting the individual animal."
For his own part, Olson is planning a global music festival aimed at getting people to volunteer for environmental efforts.
"Toki has given me a much stronger mission than I ever have," Olson said. "I always thought it was strong enough...now without anger, without range, it's just motivation and strong emotion."