by David Kirby
Four months later, on February 24, 2010, Blackstone investors would be forgiven for pangs of buyer’s remorse. Perhaps they did not realize that their killer whales might actually live up to their names.
31
Death at SeaWorld
The early sky loomed gray and foreboding. A strong gale blew out of the north and rippled across Live Oak Lake with gusts up to thirty miles per hour, slamming the windchill down to the low forties. For Dawn Brancheau and her husband, Scott, February 24, 2010, started as just another cool winter morning in their modest one-story home on lakefront property outside St. Cloud, Florida, a quiet Orlando suburb near the honky-tonk tourist mecca of Kissimmee.
Scott and Dawn lived in the house with their two chocolate labs, Ruger and Maggi. It was a good life, full of the comings and goings of family and friends from town, church, and of course SeaWorld. Dawn had 250 people on her Christmas card list. She was also growing out her long, straw-colored ponytail, which she was about to snip off and donate to Locks of Love, a charity that provides human-hair wigs to cancer patients.
The former high school class president and homecoming queen treasured her job at SeaWorld—she had never tired of her lifelong dream. Having worked her way up the ladder at Shamu from trainer to assistant trainer in her first two years, Dawn continued to rise with a promotion to assistant supervisor in 2004 and supervisor in 2008. Now in a salaried position, she was one of the most senior people in the entire animal training department.
Dawn continued to garner favorable annual performance appraisals. Her most recent review, in 2009, listed among Dawn’s competencies that she “passionately supports department, park and corporate initiatives.”
Dawn had worked with nearly all the killer whales that came through SeaWorld Orlando during those years and had been assigned to various animal teams in the past, including for Takara, Taku, Skyla, Tekoa, Unna, Sumar, Ikaika, and Taima. She was now on the teams of Katina, Kayla, Trua, Nalani, and Malia for water work whales, and the teams for both dry work whales, Tilikum and Taima (Taima had been removed from water work in 2007 because of her aggressive tendencies).
Now approved for “Level 3” water work, Dawn was one of the few people in the park who were given the okay to perform every behavior in a whale’s repertoire, including the hotdogging stunts such as hydros and rocket hops. Dawn was a star in Orlando. A picture of her, smiling next to a killer whale, was part of SeaWorld Orlando’s advertising campaign. It was included in a giant composite mural that welcomed arriving passengers to Orlando International Airport. Dawn was often featured in TV news stories about goings-on at SeaWorld and was profiled in Orlando newspapers and magazines as well.
Back in 2006, she had been written up in the Orlando Sentinel when SeaWorld was getting ready to launch its new “Believe” show, which the newspaper said was designed to be “inspirational” and to leave audiences “with the notion that if people can swim with killer whales, they can achieve anything.”
Of course, if people can swim with killer whales, they might also die with killer whales. Even Dawn sensed that. “You can’t put yourself in the water unless you trust them,” she said, “and they trust you.”
After Dawn died, many people would wonder if she had grown to trust Tilikum more than she should have.
But in February of 2010, Dawn Brancheau must have felt extremely safe at work. After all, SeaWorld had come a long way since the bad old bone-crushing days of 1987, when injuries in the killer whale pool were rampant. Much to its credit, SeaWorld had continued to implement and reform training, safety, and emergency procedures designed to provide several layers of protection to reduce accidents, attacks, and the impact of other aggressive acts by the killer whales in its collection.
In addition to compiling Animal Profiles and incident reports, SeaWorld had also created something called the Behavior Review Committee (BRC), whose purpose was for senior staff at all SeaWorld parks to constantly review animal and trainer safety records before approving whales and trainers for advancement to more complicated behaviors, including water work.
Trainers learned how to go limp when grabbed by a whale, and whales learned how to keep their mouths closed and to keep swimming if someone fell in the water, and to swim toward one of the gates whenever a net was dropped into a pool.
Meanwhile, new trainers were walked through a lengthy checklist of steps they needed to complete, along with a supervisor. The complicated and arduous undertaking started with the basics—such as how to walk safely around a pool and over gates with and without buckets—and went through every emergency procedure, animal incident report, and safety check. Working at Shamu Stadium required a dive physical, a scuba certificate requirement, CPR classes, spotting directions, “water extrication” classes, instructions in needle disposal, and monthly net-deployment drills.
All staff were fully schooled in the locations and proper use of scubacuzzis, oxygen tanks, shepherd’s crooks, scuba gear, backboards (stretchers), pony-bottle air equipment, air horns, emergency alarm switches, and emergency nets.
Then there were the safety procedures specific to Tilikum.
On day one at Shamu Stadium, all new trainers were required to learn the Tilikum Safety Protocol. Part of that procedure included giving newcomers what was casually referred to as the “Tilly talk.” The talk was short and simple: If you get in the water with Tilikum, you will likely not survive.
The rules on conduct around Tilikum were pages long. Stadium employees were required to stay behind metal barriers when working with the whale, while guests and non-Shamu personnel had to remain at least five feet behind the pool walls. In the slide-out areas, trainers had to remain positioned in front of his pectoral flippers. When Tilikum was in the back pools, swimming in the front pool was permitted only when all gates were locked and doubly secured (and vice versa).
Some of the rules were quite extravagant, especially when it came to walking over bridges that crossed the gates between pools. In the “Tilikum General Guideline,” for example, rule number 14 stipulated, “An approved non-tactile team member or above, in a wetsuit, may walk over the front side of a gate surrounding a pool to which Tilikum has access only if Tilikum is under stimulus control and gate has a safety rail.”
In case of emergency “in which trainers, guest, or non-department personnel fall or otherwise enter the water with Tilikum without authorization,” an extensive and separate protocol was also devised. The first step was to initiate the “A.A.R.M” sequence: Hit the alarm to activate the siren and call 911; try to get air to the victim via a pony bottle; unfurl the appropriate reel of netting; and move all animals to other pools.
Net pulls were used to control, separate, or remove the animal, preferably toward D Pool, where the false bottom could raise the whale quickly out of the water if needed.
If Tilikum responded to the net properly by heading toward a gate, “the victim should be instructed to exit the water if capable,” the special protocol stated. If unable to exit, the victim should be assisted with emergency equipment. If Tilikum did not respond to the “recall stimulus” efforts, then staff was instructed to repeat all the same methods: spare air; hooks and poles “to assist victim when in reach”; opening pool gates for animal egress; bringing “a large food bucket poolside”; or using the net to “aid with animal control, separation, animal removal, or rescue of victim.”
But it’s unlikely that on the morning of February 24, Dawn Brancheau’s mind was overly concerned with rescuing someone from Tilikum’s pool. The park was quiet that morning; a Wednesday in February was never peak time, and the cool, gray weather wasn’t helping. A heavy rain was forecast for the afternoon. It was going to be a fairly easy day. During February only two “Believe” shows took place per day, though Dawn was also on deck as control trainer during that day’s “Dine with Shamu” lunch in G Pool.
A little gloomy weather was not going to keep everyone out of the park that day. Many of them were at SeaWorld for the first time,
including John Kielty, a Massachusetts native now living in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, who had driven down to Orlando to spend some time with his vacationing sister, her husband, and her son. John, in his early forties, with a soft, round face, light-brown hair, and South Boston accent, had headed south for the winter after his construction inspection business began to fall off with the economic downturn. John was excited by the diversion. He felt good about SeaWorld and its efforts to save the world’s oceans, and he was anticipating seeing the “Shamu whales,” as visitors to the park that day were calling them.
John, his sister, and her family walked across the long wooden causeway that bisects the water-ski lagoon and leads visitors to Shamu Stadium. There was no line to get in. They ignored the young people hawking official ponchos and towels in the Splash Zone and headed for drier seats farther up in the stadium.
John wasn’t impressed with the show. It seemed kind of lame to him, and the whales didn’t appear to be enthusiastic about performing that day. In fact, they didn’t seem to be behaving well at all. After some foot pushes and perimeter swims and a couple of stand-ons, that was about it. Before he knew it, the show was wrapping up. It was time for the big splash finale.
The finale was a flop. One whale came out into the main pool, gave a modest push of its flukes, and soaked a small handful of people on the far left-hand side. That’s when John noticed another whale shoot out of the gate from the back pools and swim directly for the splash whale, ramming that animal and then chasing it around the tank.
Clearly, this was not part of the show. The audience waited patiently, not sure what was supposed to happen now.
Dawn Brancheau and her colleagues had been well trained in handling these kinds of situations. Once in a while, the whales would show more interest in playing or sparring for dominance among themselves than doing backflips for tourists—no matter how attractive the reinforcement proffered for conditioned behavior.
First of all, the trainers knew never to say that a show was being “canceled.” The proper buzzword, approved at corporate headquarters, was “postponed.” The list of prohibited buzzwords had grown over the years since Jeff Ventre and Carol Ray had started at SeaWorld, as documented by memos sent to staff in a series called “Let’s Talk … adlibbing.” The key to using the approved vocabulary was to “stay positive and keep it on a 5th grade level,” the memo said. The official taboo terms, it added, “are the stuff of the Dark Side and could have a negative connotation.”
The company handbooks even had prepared scripts for trainers to follow when the animals acted up and caused an interruption. The approved chatter was designed to play down an incident, reassure the audience, and ad-lib as if nothing out of the ordinary were occurring, no matter how serious the situation with the whales. Trainers were told to “keep things lighthearted, always smile” and “keep an upbeat demeanor and voice.” There was even a suggested joke: “Whales are around 5000 lbs, we are ___, and believe me, there is no way I’m going to get a 5000 lb whale to do anything he/she doesn’t want to do!”
That corny yarn, just thirty minutes later, would prove to be accurate, but also entirely inappropriate for the situation.
The script continued, “We understand that things don’t go right all the time, but we do our best to get things back on track and have them not occur again from the way we respond—they are animals, not robots.”
During the ensuing downtime, as staff tried to sort out the animal problem, the narrator was instructed to banter about the whales. Quite tellingly, only one topic pertained to the natural history of orcas: “Killer whale society is a matriarchal society,” the ad-lib script said. Everything else was about captivity: “Discuss the fundamentals of animal training. Start with positive reinforcement and the variety of ways to reinforce correct behavior.… Discuss HELPRS and explain why it is important to keep variety for killer whales.… Discuss the requirements to become an animal trainer.”
During these unscheduled intermissions, SeaWorld was given a golden opportunity to educate their captive audience on the lives of killer whales in the ocean. But it was wasted: Trainers were not told to ad-lib about orca family relations, Transients and Residents, geographic ranges, foraging behaviors, vocalizations, echolocation, or natural life spans.
On February 24, when the “Believe” show broke down, the trainers began their “lighthearted” explanations. “Just like feuding siblings, our whales are misbehaving, and we’re just gonna ignore their behavior until they simmer down a little bit,” John Kielty heard one of the female trainers say with a laugh in her voice. “They’re more interested in splashing each other right now than splashing you guys. We’ll give them ten minutes and see what happens.”
After the unplanned intermission, in which the feuding whales were separated, the show started again. It was supposed to be the big splash finale, but the whales were still not interested in performing. To John, they seemed agitated, uncooperative, and focused on other things.
“Okay, folks! Thank you for coming to the show,” the trainer abruptly said. “We hope you enjoy the rest of your day at the park.” With that, everyone got up to leave.
“Well, that was pretty bizarre, wasn’t it?” John’s sister asked.
“It sure was,” John said. “Those whales wanted to fight, not perform. That show sucked.”
They left the stadium and walked around the nearby area for about forty-five minutes. Then they heard an alarm going off, coming from the “Dine with Shamu” area, behind the stadium.
* * *
Suzanne Connell had a terrific surprise in store for her son, Bobby, for his tenth birthday. Months before she and her husband, Todd, had flown down to Orlando with their son, Suzanne had quietly booked a table for lunch at the “Dine with Shamu” experience for their magic day at SeaWorld. Bobby loved SeaWorld and he loved Shamu. This was the family’s third trip to the park in almost as many years, and they never missed the killer whale show. Bobby had pictures of himself with several of the trainers he idolized, including Dawn Brancheau. As they strolled across the wooden footbridge toward Shamu Stadium, Suzanne pulled out the passes and sent the boy into fits of delight.
The Connells, visiting from Somersworth, New Hampshire, entered the restaurant at about noon and were seated at table 13, one of the best in the house—right next to the spot where the lead trainer would interact with “Shamu.” The dining area was a covered outdoor café called The Cove, spread out along the north end of G Pool and the adjacent Green Room, where an all-American, all-you-can-eat buffet was laid out for guests. They had all paid $35 per adult and $18 per child to experience “Dine with Shamu.”
As they ate their burgers and chicken fingers, a large bull with a flopped-over dorsal fin—Tilikum—swam around G Pool in rolling circles. The water was gray, murky, and opaque, a product of the overcast sky. Behind him, in an adjacent pool gated off from Tilikum, the Connells could see some trainers in their orca-like black-and-white wet suits preparing other whales for the 12:30 “Believe” show.
The whales were restless, churning up the water and making wild vocalizations. The Connells had never heard SeaWorld animals making such a racket. Then they noticed that Tilikum was equally agitated and making eerie, loud cries of his own. He was clearly reacting to what was going on in the other pool. The show got under way, but then was abruptly halted, something the Connells found extremely odd.
A little after 1:00 p.m., the narrative portion of the “Dine with Shamu” experience began. A young female stage manager came out and greeted the diners, following yet another carefully crafted script. “Dine with Shamu” was produced according to its own particular set of “Presentation Guidelines” for staff to follow. Given the more intimate setting, the low number of guests, and the opportunity to question trainers, uncomfortable topics stood a far greater chance of coming up here than during the main Shamu show.
“Please refrain from addressing the dorsal fin topic,” the guidelines said. “We have many othe
r fun, pertinent, and interesting topics to discuss.” SeaWorld then instructed its trainers how to explain why some whales were fed large cubes of gelatin. Tilikum alone consumed up to ten gallons of the stuff (eighty-three pounds) every day, partly to prevent the dehydration caused by eating thawed frozen fish. “When discussing jello, please do not mention that it is offered to the whales to provide hydration. Refer to it as another type of reinforcement or enrichment—a tasteless, sugar-free, colorless treat! They seem to enjoy the texture!”
Then, without irony, the guidelines added, “Please make sure your information is accurate.”
The banter should also be “entertaining and easy to understand. This should be fun and the REAL inside scoop for DWS.”
Trainers were encouraged to focus their references on “our Shamu Family. We can introduce the whales by name but we want the guests to feel like they are watching Shamu/Baby Shamu during the interaction.” What any of this had to do with educating the public about killer-whale natural history, the guidelines failed to explain.
And then there was the Twitter plug. “Just out of curiosity, how many of you are on Twitter?” the script said. “Awesome! Well, Twitter is so popular, that even Shamu is doing it! That’s right, check out REALSHAMU at Twitter to find out what’s on the big guy’s mind. He’ll answer questions, let you know what he’s having for breakfast, his favorite English soccer team … seriously, it’s very cool.”
Such was the ease with which SeaWorld got around its own aversion to anthropomorphizing the animals.
Then it was showtime. The beaming stage manager returned to the approved patter: “Is everyone enjoying their meals?… Excellent! I’ll tell chef. Now, I bet everyone here is ready to meet the stars of our show … our trainers and our whales!”
