Death at SeaWorld: Shamu and the Dark Side of Killer Whales in Captivity

by David Kirby

  This division of labor was codified in the MMPA, including provisions for oversight on the care and maintenance of marine mammals in captivity.

  Then it got even more complicated. NMFS did not have the staffing or infrastructure to go out and inspect conditions in hundreds of locations around the country where whales, dolphins, seals, and sea lions were put on display. Many of the people at NMFS were dedicated field scientists and highly talented marine biologists. They knew a tremendous amount about marine mammals, but their agency was not set up to inspect captive facilities and issue animal-welfare violations.

  That task had traditionally fallen under the jurisdiction of yet another federal agency: the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the US Department of Agriculture. APHIS had hundreds of inspectors spread out in regional offices across the country, mostly in farm states, with thorough knowledge of the Animal Welfare Act and its provisions. In 1979, the two agencies entered into a formal agreement—APHIS would establish minimum standards for holding and displaying marine mammals and would conduct inspections of public display facilities to ensure compliance with the Animal Welfare Act, while NMFS would permit the holding and display of marine mammals in those facilities, with the ability to add specific conditions to any display permit.

  This complicated and unclear relationship, Naomi quickly learned, didn’t seem to serve the animals well. NMFS staff knew all about marine mammals, but they had no capacity to inspect facilities holding cetaceans. APHIS staff knew all about facility inspections, but they knew virtually nothing about marine mammals. Moreover, APHIS had long been viewed by animal welfare activists as being in the hip pocket of Big Business. Corporate profits and rising exports seemed to be its driving force far more than protecting the well-being of animals.

  The main focus of the reauthorization in 1993 was the need for a new regulatory regime for the commercial fishing industry—the “fish fix.” Commercial fisheries were allowed to take (that is, injure or kill) marine mammals incidental to their operations, but the law remained in need of a mechanism to control this accidental carnage and reduce it.

  Free Willy could not have come at a better time for HSUS and other anti-captivity groups. By June 16, Naomi was working to put together the Marine Mammal Protection Coalition, more than twenty NGOs committed to strengthening the MMPA. Naomi became the organizing secretary of the coalition. On the captivity issue, the movie was their rallying point.

  Even Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat, was moved by Willy’s message. Kerry chaired a hearing on the public display provisions of the act in July 1993, just two weeks after the Humane Society press conference in Orlando. He referred to the movie in his opening remarks. Naomi was there, seated behind her boss, John Grandy, who was at the witness table.

  “The people that have seen the movie have had a chance to do what many say the public display of marine mammals is supposed to do, which is bring people closer to an understanding of our relationship to them and an understanding of nature and ecosystems,” Kerry said. But it also raised questions about the quality of life for captive marine mammals, he said.

  The rising popularity of viewing marine mammals and interactive programs such as “swim with the dolphins” had brought “more and more Americans into contact with marine mammals,” Kerry said. That had gone a long way toward fostering public education and a growing respect for the animals, “but those activities also raise questions about treatment.”

  At the hearing, Grandy laid out several of HSUS’s key proposals for amending the public display provisions of the MMPA. The ideas were controversial and vehemently opposed by industry. But HSUS considered this an opportunity to ask for as much as it could, no matter how pie-in-the-sky the request. Among the amendments John proposed were a permanent ban on the taking of any marine mammal for the purpose of display; a prohibition on direct contact with marine mammals through interactive programs such as swimming with dolphins; and the transfer of all oversight responsibilities for captive marine mammals away from APHIS and over to NMFS.

  “APHIS has not demonstrated in the past that it can adequately ensure the humane treatment and welfare of marine mammals on public display,” John said in testimony prepared by Naomi. NMFS “should have sole responsibility for marine mammals in captivity.”

  As 1993 drew to a close, Naomi worked diligently with HSUS legislative staff, congressional allies on the Hill, and her coalition of marine mammal and animal welfare organizations, which engaged in a massive letter-writing campaign to Congress.

  The anti-cap group came up with a six-point wish list they wanted from Congress for public display amendments. Naomi knew they would get few if any of them, but it was worth making the case. In addition to a ban on capture and swim-with programs, and the transfer of oversight to NMFS, the coalition was now seeking a prohibition on marine mammal exports, a ban on the intentional feeding of mammals in the ocean, and a law against the taking of whales and dolphins from the notorious “drive fisheries.”

  By any standard, drive fisheries are brutal, bloody, and intensely inhumane. They are also the source of many of the dolphins and small whales held in captivity today, particularly in Asia. Found in places such as Taiji, Japan, drive hunts are done primarily to eliminate toothed whales that compete with humans for fish, and to provide their meat to local consumers. The HSUS website provides this description of the awful scene in Japan:

  Fishermen take out several small motorized boats to locate a pod of bottlenose dolphins, Risso’s dolphins, or false killer whales (and possibly such other species as pilot whales). Once the fishermen locate a pod, they begin herding the animals toward shore, using the noise of the boats’ engines and the banging of pipes underwater. There are some reports that they also use underwater explosives. The fishermen will then either drive the animals right onto the shore or trap them in a bay. Either way, shallow water is necessary, because fishermen slaughter the dolphins by getting into the water and moving through the pod, stabbing animals to death.… Animals destined for slaughter may be hauled out onto land with cranes, often still alive. The cruelty is enormous.

  The Japanese drives had a secondary revenue stream: The youngest, most attractive animals were, and still are, set aside and spared the knife, to be presented instead to buyers from aquariums, theme parks, and swim-with programs around the world.

  As Congress kept wrangling over amendments from various factions, Naomi continued to learn more about killer whales in captivity. She wondered what SeaWorld had been telling its visitors about killer whales.

  SeaWorld’s Corporate Zoological Department had produced a pair of pamphlets specifically on orcas, which Naomi located in her HSUS files. Both were riddled with inaccuracies and misstatements. Naomi was so astounded by the liberties SeaWorld was taking she mailed a four-page letter of complaint to chief animal vet Jim McBain in Orlando.

  “These brochures apparently are being handed out to the general public when they visit your parks,” Naomi began. “There are several problems with the information presented in [them] and I wanted to discuss them with you.”

  The first publication, “The Facts About SeaWorld’s Killer Whales,” for example, referred to the vitamin and mineral supplements in the whales’ diet “as though these were a benefit of captivity,” she said. “It reads, ‘supplements are even added to ensure nutritional requirements are being met.’ It disturbs me that SeaWorld would mislead the public in such a way. Wild orcas obviously do not require vitamin supplements to live healthy lives and the reason they are necessary in captivity may be because some nutritional needs are not met by the restricted diet of frozen fish that captive whales are provided.”

  The brochure also claimed that “much of what the scientific community knows about killer whales comes as a result of knowledge gained at SeaWorld.” Such a statement was “out of context at best and untrue at worst,” Naomi charged. Yes, some knowledge about physiology had been gleaned largely from captive animals, “but little
if any of the information regarding behavior, population demographics, or social structure has come from them, as it is widely accepted that these characteristics are greatly altered in the captive environment. These days, the vast majority of knowledge about these topics was coming from studies of wild populations.”

  Naomi continued, “By far the most disturbing statement in this brochure is that ‘killer whales have a maximum life span of 25 to 35 years.’ Jim, you know this is not true. There are two dozen individual whales in the Pacific Northwest who indisputably demonstrate the inaccuracy of this statement; first observed as adults in 1973, they are still alive and healthy today, with several of the females still reproducing.”

  Next, she attacked the claim that the social setting for the park’s killer whales was “carefully monitored to ensure it remains healthy.” But none of the groupings at SeaWorld reflected any natural social structures known in the wild, Naomi stated. “I am at a loss to understand how you and your colleagues have determined that SeaWorld social groupings are ‘healthy.’ They mix stocks (Atlantic and Pacific) and races (transient and resident); in my professional opinion, it is in fact highly unlikely that these social groupings are healthy. SeaWorld’s social groupings are artificial in every sense of the word.”

  The second brochure was called “The Real Story on Killer Whales.” According to Naomi, it implied that fishermen would return to shooting orcas “if these animals are no longer held in captivity as ‘ambassadors.’ This is absurd; the public has amply demonstrated that the whale is now institutionalized as deserving of our protection.”

  This brochure correctly stated that humans do not yet completely understand killer whale behavior. But then it added, “We are able to tell that our whales are happy by the way they act.” The two positions, Naomi said, were “contradictory” and “poor science.” Animals have strong survival instincts, she wrote. They can adjust to their circumstances. Intelligent animals use whatever means available to them to ward off tedium. Therefore it was “self-serving for SeaWorld to say that its whales are happy. The state of mind of captive animals certainly cannot be discerned through the behaviors that are mentioned in the brochure.”

  It was abundantly hypocritical for SeaWorld to maintain that the behavior of its wild-caught killer whales was natural while also claiming they couldn’t survive a return to the wild. SeaWorld implied that years in human care had transformed them into helpless creatures unable to return to their natural environment. “Maintaining these two positions simultaneously is a serious flaw in logic.”

  Naomi ended with this final jab: “Jim, I take great exception to the following sentence: ‘To subject one of these magnificent animals to an untried experiment [rehabilitation and release] would be inhumane.’ This is enraging. Thirty years ago, SeaWorld subjected several of these magnificent animals to an untried experiment—captivity. And it was extremely inhumane, because several animals promptly died, painfully and completely unnecessarily, as a result of the flawed protocols of this experimental captivity program. It is hypocritical of SeaWorld to criticize an experimental release program with such a statement.”

  Naomi never got a response to her letter.

  The MMPA reauthorization had its final hearing on public display in the US House, in February of 1994. Naomi attended along with her boss, John Grandy, to present their six proposed amendments. They had no idea they were walking into an eleventh-hour ambush. The industry and its powerful allies on Capitol Hill had quietly devised a raft of changes to the law behind closed doors and presented them here for the first time. Naomi felt sick to her stomach. Voting on the final bill was only weeks or at most months away. Now, SeaWorld and its formidable coalition of zoos and aquariums had finally shown their hand on display issues.

  Among the amendments proposed on behalf of public display facilities:

  • Gut NMFS’s authority over marine mammals once they have been taken from the ocean: Industry wanted APHIS to have full control once any animal “made it through the door.”

  • Allow the export of captive marine mammals without a permit.

  • Eliminate the requirement that educational programs must be acceptable to the secretary of commerce.

  • Exempt animals taken for research or species enhancement from inclusion in the Marine Mammal Inventory Report.

  • Drop the requirement to submit necropsy reports to NMFS.

  In the end, the Alliance and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA; formerly the AAZPA) got almost everything they wanted on the captivity provisions of the bill; HSUS and its allies lost almost everything (they did manage to win one slight victory: The MMIR would now have to be updated within thirty days of an animal’s change in status, rather than annually). It was a kick in the gut for marine mammal activists everywhere. Naomi had never felt so defeated before in her life. She and the coalition had been outfoxed by their opposition. Naomi was beginning to appreciate just how powerful and influential the industry was. She had chosen a formidable foe. Its pockets were deep, its attorneys were skilled, and its lobbyists were everywhere.

  The display industry had sauntered away from Capitol Hill with a massive and well-orchestrated victory. In exchange, industry had agreed to provisions that Naomi considered to be mere window dressing. From now on, marine mammal facilities would have to meet three rudimentary criteria to obtain a permit (from NMFS) to capture or import a marine mammal for public display purposes.

  Industry lobbyists themselves had drafted the new criteria. Naomi figured that executives at the trade association—despite their influence—knew that asking for total freedom to do anything they pleased was unlikely to fly. Congress members, even close allies, would likely push back, at least somewhat, on that idea. So they included these three simple provisions:

  • The facility must be open to the public with no barriers to access except for an admission fee.

  • The facility must have a license and adhere to all best standards and practices set forth under the Animal Welfare Act.

  • The facility must offer conservation efforts and education programs that meet “professional standards.”

  It was a pretty low bar for the industry to meet. Keeping regular hours for the public was certainly no problem (only a small number of facilities were private by that time). The AWA standards were nothing new. Besides, those standards had been established with heavy influence from—yes—the industry. Who knew more about captive marine mammals than the captive marine mammal industry? Members of Congress were hardly in a position to dictate such things as pool size, water quality and salinity, nutrition, number of animals per enclosure, enrichment programs, and so forth. Congress (and APHIS) felt they had no choice but to rely on the experts. Those experts were mostly at SeaWorld.

  The same was true for educational standards. It was no longer up to the secretary of commerce to decide what was acceptable; it was now up to industry itself. In both cases—animal welfare and public education—it was the height of self-regulation and it repelled Naomi to no end.

  Another crushing blow for Naomi and the anti-captivity people was that, under the reauthorization bill, facilities that did not display captured or imported animals were completely exempt from the rules and protections of the MMPA. Any aquarium could now open up with domestic, captive-bred animals and not have to be open to the public or have an education/conservation program.

  Naomi also worried about what would happen now that NMFS’s marine biologists would no longer have any jurisdiction over the health and well-being of cetaceans in captivity. What would happen, she wondered, when the only experts judging the mental and physical health of captive marine mammals were inspectors from the USDA?

  It seemed like a recipe for disaster.

  21

  Kiss of Death

  Jeff Ventre was growing more disillusioned every week with his training job at Shamu Stadium. He kept up his lengthy conversations with Astrid van Ginneken, the Dutch woman who split her vacation time each year bet
ween SeaWorld Orlando—home to her beloved orca Gudrun—and the Orca Survey project at the Center for Whale Research on San Juan Island. Whenever they got together, Astrid would fill Jeff in on all the data that Ken Balcomb and his team were gathering from the Southern Resident community, often bringing news about recent births, deaths, and other developments in the eighty whales or so belonging to J, K, and L pods.

  Astrid continued to urge Jeff to make the trip up to the San Juan Islands to see the wild whales for himself. He would get a much better perspective of the orcas among their pods, she assured him.

  Jeff was finally accepting that SeaWorld had crafted a tightly orchestrated façade of happiness and old-fashioned fun, then blended that with the pretensions of hard science and public education. This carefully constructed image that SeaWorld sold to a gullible, entertainment-hungry public was highly profitable, Jeff now understood. But it was a fairy tale.

  And Jeff had helped preach the party line. SeaWorld had been spoon-feeding its staff a big box of bullshit, he now reckoned with a modicum of shame for having been deceived. It was all jovial pabulum cooked up soft and dished out to tourists about how “happy” the whales were, how their fish was restaurant quality, how safe it was to work with them.

  Jeff was told to say that killer whales live about twenty-five to thirty years, whether in the wild or at SeaWorld. But Astrid told him that some females in Washington State were well into their seventies. One matriarch, the undisputed chief of J pod, was believed to be in her eighties. Her ID number was J2, but everyone knew her as Granny.

  If asked about dorsal fin collapse, Jeff had been taught to dismiss it as something that happened both in the wild and captivity. But Astrid said that wasn’t so. A few male orcas in the Southern Resident community had slightly bent, curved, or wavy fins, she told Jeff, but none had the kind of complete collapse seen with Tilikum, Keiko, and all adult males living in tanks. At SeaWorld, even most of the adult females had some form of dorsal fin bending, which was rare in wild populations.