As a child growing up in Connecticut, Alexandra dreamed of studying animals in the wild. As a young woman, she went to California to work with Dr. John Lilly, a pioneer in underwater dolphin communication. There, she met a pair of captive orca whales, Orky and Corky, and decided to track down and record their home pod off the coast of British Columbia. Working with her husband, Canadian filmmaker Robin Morton, she learned to identify individual whales and dolphins by sight and sound, greatly advancing knowledge of marine mammal behaviour.
Alexandra believed that orca whales were threatened by the introduction of salmon farming along the central coast of B.C. and began to investigate the effects of noise, disease, parasites and pollution associated with concentrated fish farms. She launched private prosecutions against the foreign owners of the salmon farms and collaborated with marine biologists in Europe to gather and publish scientific evidence, which she presented at the Cohen Commission into the collapse of the salmon run. Alexandra helped found the Raincoast Research Society and received many awards, including an honorary Doctorate of Science from Simon Frazer University. She continues her passionate advocacy for wild salmon and orca whales off Canada’s west coast.
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