by David Kirby
Later in the day, in an e-mail announcement, the sheriff’s office identified the victim as Dawn Brancheau, who, it noted, “was reported to have 16 years’ experience working with killer whales.”
By late afternoon, SeaWorld officials realized that the “Dawn fell in the pool” story was not accurate. Chuck Tompkins corrected the record in a live interview with WFTV news in Orlando. “She was pulled in and she drowned,” he said with a dour face.
“Did she fall in?” the reporter asked.
“No, she was pulled in. At the end of it, she was apparently rubbing the animal down and apparently the whale pulled her in.” Asked if Tilikum would be put down, Tompkins looked horrified. “No, absolutely not, absolutely not. He’s a large animal, he’s a killer whale, and we understand the risks of working with these large animals.”
Tompkins said later that everyone at the park was aware of the danger with Tilikum, but added that safety protocols for the whale would be evaluated and changed. “We interact with him a lot, but only under the safest conditions. Or so we thought.”1
* * *
Naomi was in her cubicle in the Gaithersburg office catching up on e-mail when a message appeared in her in-box from Richard Patch. Richard, a colleague at the Humane Society Legislative Fund (the HSUS lobbying and political action arm), handled marine mammal issues. He was a reliable source for breaking news, and today’s bulletin was no exception.
“Trainer killed at SeaWorld,” the subject line announced.
The message was brief, short on details. Richard had just heard on the news that a trainer in Orlando had drowned in the killer whale pool. More details would be available soon. Naomi immediately began e-mailing around to colleagues and checking news websites.
Within the hour, media were coming to her, in search of comment and perspective.
In the past decade Naomi had focused most of her captivity work on dolphins, especially the swim-with attractions popping up around the world, large captures in the Solomon Islands, and substandard display facilities in the Caribbean. One recent victory was stopping live captures and the development of a dolphin park in Panama by Ocean Embassy,2 the Florida company run by onetime Keiko team members Robin Friday and Mark Simmons, the former roommate and SeaWorld colleague of Jeff Ventre and John Jett.
Over the years Naomi had carved out a niche as one of the world’s leading authorities on captive marine mammals. She was now a go-to person among major media whenever captive cetaceans made the news. However inadvertently, Naomi had become the Jane Goodall of marine life held in captivity.
She was stunned by the death in Orlando, but had no time to emotionally process the news. It arrived out of the blue. With mere minutes to brace herself for the media onslaught, Naomi shifted into a mode that she described as “sound-bite autopilot.”
The next several days melded into a blur of telephone interviews and live appearances at radio and TV studios around the capital. She featured prominently in many of the thousands of news stories reported around the world.
In one interview with the New York Daily News, Naomi compared Dawn’s case with the other two deaths on Tilikum’s record: “What he did in the previous two incidents were not attacks. To him, the people were toys, and to a whale, being underwater for twenty minutes is nothing.” But in Dawn’s case, she added, “This sounds a little more like an attack.”
The News asked Naomi what should become of the whale. “I dread to think of what they think their options are,” she said of SeaWorld.
Some people were already calling for the perpetrator’s extermination, even certain anti-captivity activists. “Tilikum is a casualty of captivity; it has destroyed his mind and turned him demented,” claimed Russ Rector, a former dolphin trainer who ran the Dolphin Freedom Foundation in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “If he was a horse, dog, bear, cat, or elephant, he would already have been put down after the first kill, and this is his third.”
Naomi wasn’t surprised that some people were calling for this outcome, but she knew that death was not the answer for Tilikum. “It’s not his fault what happened, just as it wasn’t Dawn Brancheau’s,” she told The Guardian. “The fault lies with using these wild animals as entertainment.”
In an interview with the St. Petersburg Times, Naomi reacted to early reports that Tilikum would remain at SeaWorld—and stay in the “Believe” show: “A return to business as usual is terribly disappointing. It will happen again. It’s not a question of if. It’s a question of when. This is his normal behavior. It’s what he does when someone falls in the water.” To keep Tilikum in proximity to people “is like leaving drugs on the table for an addict.”
Naomi told AOL news, “SeaWorld should have changed their policy in terms of Tilikum years ago. This was an accident waiting to happen. One of the biggest problems is that SeaWorld miseducates the public. What the public is seeing isn’t a contented animal behaving naturally, but a caricature dragged into a box and not given any choice.”
SeaWorld was “not without its defenders,” AOL noted. Journalist Amy Sutherland, who studied exotic-animal training for two books, Kicked, Bitten, and Scratched and What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage, said the company was “revered in the animal training world.” SeaWorld had “pioneered some of the most progressive training techniques and is well-known for using positive reinforcement. They do a great job, both in caring for their animals’ needs and for their trainers’ safety.” Sutherland had confidence that SeaWorld would conduct a thorough investigation and adjust its safety procedures to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.
One of the hardest-hitting articles in the media frenzy following the tragedy appeared in SeaWorld’s hometown paper, the Orlando Sentinel, under the headline “Killer-Whale Experts Say: Reintroduce Tilikum to the Wild.”
According to the paper, “a conversation has started within the whale research and advocacy communities about what ought to be done with an orca linked to three human deaths.” Every whale expert the reporter had contacted “would rather see killer whales in their natural habitat—the earth’s oceans—than in tanks at an Orlando theme park. One suggested that building a tank the size of Rhode Island wouldn’t be large enough for a six-ton male such as Tilikum, an animal capable of swimming 100 miles in a day.”
But reintroducing Tilikum to the wild “would be costly, would include serious risks for the animal and would not guarantee his survival,” many experts cautioned. “Nonetheless, in the aftermath of veteran SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau’s death this week, authorities such as Naomi Rose argue there is a moral obligation to release Tilikum.”
“There is absolutely a risk in keeping him where he is,” Naomi told the paper, predicting Tilikum would kill again if kept in captivity. “I will take bets on that and win. Boredom, depression—these cause physical problems in human beings, chimpanzees and, believe me, killer whales.”
Naomi said she hoped the tragedy would become “a tipping point” in the debate, but added, “SeaWorld is not going to change, at least not without some serious pressure from its customer base.”
Howard Garrett, of the Orca Network in Washington State, told the Sentinel that Tilikum could be cared for much the same as Keiko had been in Iceland. He envisioned handlers taking Tilikum on “walks.” If the whale failed to locate his family, he could be trained to return to places where humans could feed and help him. “They need companionship above all, more than food,” Howie said of killer whales. “In the absence of family, they’ll follow human friends.”
A colleague and neighbor of Howie’s, Jenny Atkinson, executive director of the Whale Museum in Friday Harbor, on San Juan Island, said the ocean might not be the best place for an animal such as Tilikum. “He has been in captivity since he was two. It’s what he knows,” she told the paper. “I can’t say what I want for that whale is what the whale wants because I can’t ask him.… You don’t know how he would respond in the wild or how the wild would respond to him.”
Tha
t night, Naomi appeared on Larry King Live. “I feel very strongly that certain animals don’t belong in captivity,” she said. “My personal opinion and my organization’s opinion is that orcas are a species that doesn’t belong in captivity. I think that, put into that kind of confinement—they’re very large animals. They’re very social. They’re very intelligent. And those are very small enclosures for an animal of that size.”
By the end of the long day on February 24, Naomi realized just how profoundly everything had changed. Suddenly, killer whales were part of the national conversation, and much of that discussion was firmly centered on captivity. No attack by a captive orca had ever prompted such serious questions about captivity. Naomi had seen nothing like it.
“It’s extraordinary,” she remarked to her husband, Chris. “The captivity issue in the US just went from zero to sixty in one second.” Tough questions were now being asked by a national media that had, until now, uncritically celebrated SeaWorld for more than a generation. Dawn’s death may have been tragic and pointless, but it certainly wasn’t meaningless.
* * *
Dr. Jeffrey Ventre was working with patients at a clinic when he got the news. Now a full-fledged MD, he had moved to New Orleans in 2008 and entered a residency program at Louisiana State University’s Health Sciences Center in New Orleans. Jeff was a physiatrist, with specialized training in physical medicine and rehabilitation. PM&R doctors work with patients with traumatic brain and spinal-cord injury, as well as those recovering after amputations, strokes, heart attacks, low-back pains, car accidents, and gunshot wounds.
John Jett called at 3:30 p.m. and broke the news. John and Jeff had kept in contact since their SeaWorld days. After quitting the park, John sold aerospace components before earning a master’s degree in environmental science from Oklahoma State University and a PhD in the same field from the University of Florida. Now he was working at Stetson University, a top-rated private school in DeLand, Florida, north of Orlando, as a visiting research professor specializing in waterway management.
They both agreed that the killer whale in question was Tilikum. The dead trainer must have been someone senior, someone who had been there for a long time—someone they knew. They both found it difficult to believe claims that the victim had fallen into the pool and drowned. SeaWorld trainers were all excellent swimmers. There was more to this story, they thought, especially if Tilikum was involved. Both men felt awful for the trainer, whoever it was, and that person’s family.
But they also knew that this calamity would be transformative: It would bring an immediate halt to all water work at Shamu Stadium, at least for now, and a high-stakes, high-profile investigation.
Even as Jeff and John were comparing notes, the Orca Network’s Howard Garrett, up in Whidbey Island, Washington, was fielding calls from worldwide media. One was from CNN reporter Gabe Ramirez, seeking someone to comment for that evening’s broadcast of Anderson Cooper 360°. Howie suggested that Gabe contact Jeff, who had far more experience with captive killer whales. Jeff was booked for that evening’s show.
Jeff initially declined the request to go on television. He was hesitant to get involved. But after another phone call from John Jett, and one from Jeff’s sister, Kim, now living in San Francisco, he somewhat reluctantly agreed to do the show, but only if he could call in via telephone. John tried to convince his old friend to go into the studio and conduct an on-camera interview, but time was running short. In the end, Jeff spoke with CNN by phone. The AC-360 staff badly wanted a former trainer on the air that night, especially someone who had worked both with Tilikum and Dawn. The connections CNN gained from the interview would prove to be tremendously valuable later on. For the next two years, no network would cover the Tilikum saga more diligently than CNN.
Anderson Cooper was off that night. AC-360 was being hosted by CNN correspondent Jessica Yellin, who opened the segment by saying, “People go to the aquarium to be amazed, entertained. But today, visitors at SeaWorld Orlando were horrified by what they saw. They watched a woman die.” Yellin asked Jeff if he was surprised by the news.
“Sure. You don’t expect something like this to happen. Tilikum is a great animal. And Dawn is a great trainer. I’m sad it did happen. I’m shocked.” Jeff added that he was aware of Tilikum’s history. In the back of his mind, Jeff was worried about a potential backlash against Tilikum, and a public cry for him to be put down. Jeff wanted to assure the audience that Tilikum was a good animal and should not be blamed for Dawn’s death.
“And, do you think it’s surprising, then, that Tilikum would attack again?” Yellin asked. “There are two other instances where people have died. Do you think this animal should still have access to humans?”
Jeff said it was hard to tell whether this had been an act of play or aggression. “All I can say is that Tilikum is a good animal, and Dawn was a great trainer.” But, Jeff was asked, why did SeaWorld still want to keep Tilikum around? “He provides semen to impregnate females,” Jeff replied. “He’s a beautiful animal. He is huge. He is impressive. And people just see him and go, ‘Wow.’ And, you know, he is—he is a money stream, as well as a great animal.”
Yellin noted that what happened at SeaWorld “raises some pretty basic questions, including whether killer whales should be kept in captivity at all, let alone with trainers anywhere near them.”
Every good story has two sides, all journalists know, and this was a good story. Speaking for the other side that evening was Jack Hanna, the cowboy-hatted director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo and a passionate defender of animal display.
Yellin challenged him right out of the gate. This was the orca’s third killing, yet most people “just assume these animals are domesticated; they’re our entertainment,” she charged. “But, really, this is an eleven-thousand-pound, twenty-two-foot whale. Should we be surprised that it would kill?”
Hanna acknowledged that Tilikum “of course” was a dangerous animal, but the previous deaths were of no consequence. Daniel Dukes had hopped a fence without authorization. “That’s like going over the fence at the NASCAR race. You can’t blame SeaWorld for that.” As for the Keltie Byrne tragedy, Hanna praised SeaWorld for taking the rogue animal after she died. “SeaWorld, I take my hat off to” because the company “brought that animal to their parks to give it a life.”
Yellin wasn’t buying it. “Three deaths on this one whale’s head. It seems to me—shouldn’t one death be enough? Shouldn’t SeaWorld have retired this animal?”
No one ever swam with Tilikum, was Hanna’s answer. This was the fault of Dawn, the top trainer “maybe in the history of SeaWorld,” he said. “Did human error happen? Yes, it did. So, I don’t think that the whale, myself, should be punished or something.”
The next afternoon, Jeff was invited back on CNN, this time on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. In his opening teaser, Blitzer posed a question not typically heard in mainstream media before Dawn’s death: “Are these giant predators or are they performers?”
Blitzer checked in with CNN’s resident curmudgeon, Jack Cafferty, who cited an interview with Naomi Rose: “She says killer whales normally live in groups with their families. The males stay with their mothers their entire lives. They rely on their family for social structure and play and cover hundreds of miles of ocean. She says situations like the one at SeaWorld cause stress. Duh.”
Cafferty ripped into SeaWorld, something that must have dialed up the anxiety level among embattled officials down in Orlando. The whales were merely performing “stupid tricks over and over,” he alleged, with his trademark scowl.“Inevitably, when some human being is playing around with these wild animals and gets attacked, it’s the animal that gets put down. It ought to be the other way around. Here’s the question: Should wild animals be used as entertainment?… Post a comment on my blog.”
Blitzer took over from there. “The killer whale attack raises new questions about whether these powerful predators should be kept as performers. I spoke with
Jeffrey Ventre. He is conflicted on the captivity issue.” As Blitzer spoke, an old video of Jeff hotdogging in Orlando played on the screen. “He says Tilikum gets excellent care at SeaWorld, and he believes that’s the best place for him to be. But he makes some counterpoints.” Blitzer discussed fin collapse in male orcas as CNN showed images of a wild and a captive whale. It was striking. Blitzer then aired a taped interview with Jeff, to make the point that “there is also financial motivation here,” as he put it.
“I am sure that he cost millions of dollars, and I’m sure that he is worth many millions more,” Jeff said in the interview. “He perpetuates the SeaWorld gene pool. He continues to perform and wow people. To lose that genetic diversity by eliminating one of a few successful male breeders would be a big, probably a detriment to the breeding effort in general, and would impact SeaWorld’s long-term goals, which is to perpetuate itself.”
CNN reporter Brian Todd, who had interviewed Jeff, said to Blitzer, “This is a debate that’s going to be going on for a long time, this whole captivity issue.”
“And it is going to be really heated,” Blitzer added. “What does he [Jeff] think may have triggered this whale to go ahead and do this?”
“It is fascinating to hear an expert talk about this. He says that Tilikum has some potential stressors,” including life in a small pool as a subdominant male in a female-run society. “He says those females, Wolf, are very, very dominant in these pods.”
Near the end of the show, Cafferty read some of the responses to his query about using wild animals for entertainment. Judging by the replies, few viewers endorsed the idea.
“Killer whales should not be kept in captivity and used for entertainment in any way!” wrote someone named Chris, who saw a SeaWorld official “trying to convince everyone that the sole purpose for keeping these animals was for research. That is BS.… I mean, I just saw a picture of a woman surfing on top of one of these animal’s heads. Is that research?”
