One man's quest to restore the orca population in the Pacific Northwest: "Nature is coming back"

Orcas are one of the most familiar forms of sea life, but in the wild, they are increasingly rare. 

Off the coast of Port Angeles in Washington state, a team has whale watching down to a science. For the past 45 years, Ken Balcomb has taken to the waters of the Pacific Northwest, leading the Orca Survey, a long-term photo identification project focusing on what is known as the southern resident killer whale population of Puget Sound.  

When he was 35 years old, Balcomb was working for the National Marine Fishery Service and tasked with counting how many whales were left after the practice of capturing killer whales for marine parks ramped up in the 1960s and 1970s.