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

by David Kirby

  Colleen and John had spent hours watching Tilikum in the back pools from high up in the stadium and from the underwater viewing area at G Pool. Most of the time he was floating motionlessly at the surface. She said to Howie, “Yes, trainers come up for ten minutes, twelve minutes, sometimes only seven minutes. Sometimes they only come up for three.”

  The lives of John and Colleen had forever been changed because of the events of February 24. Colleen, who considered herself quite spiritual, believed some force in the universe had brought her and John to the SeaWorld war together. “This was all because of Tilikum, this was his cry for help,” she said. “I believe that everything happens for a reason, and he was speaking out that day, from a more cosmic point of view. He’d killed people before, yes. But this time he made a conscious decision to attack her, so that he could be heard. I believe he really needed and wanted change.”

  Meanwhile, in Tampa, Lara Padgett’s inquest into the incident doggedly continued. On July 3 she reached out to Howard Garrett. “Would you care to weigh in on the SeaWorld incident?” Lara asked. OSHA was investigating the occupational exposure of working in the water or close to orcas, she said, “and I was hoping that you might consider writing a statement.” Howard said he would be pleased to comply. He also urged Lara to contact two former SeaWorld trainers who could provide invaluable insight about life at Shamu Stadium: Dr. Jett, and Dr. Ventre. She did.

  The first reply came from Jeff. Tilikum had “made (at least) three decisions,” he wrote. “The first was to pull Dawn into the water. The second was to displace and prevent her escape. The third was to possess-at-all-cost, leading to her death, scalping, and dismemberment.” The “call-back safety-spotter system” had failed as it had before, with examples publicly available on YouTube. “Including the recent death of trainer Alexis Martinez, we’ve seen morbidity and mortality generated by both captured and theme park bred animals. Incidents have been perpetrated by both male & female orcas.”

  Jeff commended SeaWorld for its study of orca gestation periods, for its manatee and other rescue programs, and even its artificial insemination methods “that could one-day help restore a threatened species.” Even so, he said, “Those accomplishments may or may not justify the 45-year history of orca captivity, and its associated cause of human injury and suffering. From a scientific perspective, there is a notable lack of peer-reviewed literature to justify the perpetuation of this clearly unsafe practice.”

  John wrote to Lara about a week later. He told her that SeaWorld believed it needed to maintain water work in order to protect its bottom line even though the evidence suggested that “this activity puts human life at unnecessary risk.” It was now obvious to him that working with killer whales was inherently dangerous, “both in and out of the water.” Trainers would continue to be hurt or killed because of their “close contact with these immensely strong, easily-bored, social, and contemplative animals,” he warned. John had personally witnessed whales “coming out” at trainers in incidents that were neither investigated nor listed in any report.

  Of special concern were the frequent times he had seen whales ignore callback stimuli (water slaps, stage slaps, underwater callback tones, etc.). Callbacks were the most fundamental means of controlling whales during “emergent situations,” he told the OSHA investigator. All trainers had experienced callback failures. It was part of their daily lives. “Anyone cued into observing these stimuli and their responses can discover numerous examples of whales simply choosing to ignore them (often during emergencies).”

  Other hazards lurked around the orca tank. One day John accidentally slipped and fell into C Pool when Tilikum was in it. He was able to scuttle out before Tilikum came racing over to investigate the splash. John accidentally fell into a pool with Gudrun once, although she didn’t react at all. “These incidents went unreported, yet either could have escalated into a major event.” John also mentioned the time he slammed his hip into the stage when doing a foot push with Katina. “I was never able to fully understand why I hit the stage, and again the incident went unreported.”

  John said in closing, “Accidents happen in many professional settings and certain professions are evidently more dangerous than others. However, few professions are as unnecessary as training killer whales for purely entertainment purposes.”

  * * *

  Tim Zimmermann’s groundbreaking article on the industry helped move the Tilikum saga back into the spotlight as the deadline for an OSHA ruling approached. On July 21, Tom Ashbrook, of the popular NPR-syndicated public affairs program On Point, out of WBUR-FM Boston, dedicated his hour-long show to “the whole disturbing history of killer whales in captivity.” Tim was one of three scheduled guests, along with Thad Lacinak and Ken Balcomb. During the show, Suzanne Connell called in to give her account of what happened at the “Dine with Shamu” event that fateful day, and John Jett phoned in to describe what he had witnessed working at SeaWorld.2

  Thad, when asked for a response to John’s allegations, assailed the accuser rather than the accusations. John had “never even made it to trainer level,” and he “probably” had quit after learning he was being transferred to Whale and Dolphin “because he was not cutting it at Shamu Stadium, he was not up to par with the other trainers.”

  “Will we see more deaths like this?” Ashbrook asked.

  “No, we’re not going to see more deaths like this.” Thad sounded exasperated. “I mean, SeaWorld is going to address this, they are addressing it right now.”

  After the show, John’s and Jeff’s old friend Mark Simmons went on the attack. Clearly they were no longer friends. In a comment on the On Point website, Mark accused the two former trainers of being “disgruntled past employees of SeaWorld that have an axe to grind.” John had “no more than three years [sic] experience [John had more than four years at SeaWorld], never was approved to do show water work with killer whales, was not Tilikum’s ‘team leader.’ Ventre was fired. Balcomb has never worked with whales in a zoological setting.”

  Tim had been one-sided in his reporting, Mark charged. “You have given very little weight or ‘air time’ to those with relevant and suffiecient [sic] experience to comment. If you give your audience 10% of the picture—their conclusions are dictated by ignorance. If this was meant to be a useful investigative journalism peice [sic] then try representing a balanced picture.… You cannot be an objective writer when your conclusion was preconceived.”3

  Mark wasn’t done. He also posted a comment on Tim’s website, which Tim has since deleted: “It seems I’ve lost two friends and gained a detractor.” He added that the only reason people such as Tim, John, and Jeff believed that killer whales were “worth fighting for” was because “SeaWorld taught you they were. Why do children from Iowa know what a killer whale even is or for that matter how it’s social, cares for its young or learns complex behavior? Because of SeaWorld.… Get out of your armchair and roll up your sleeves before you point your pen at me.”4

  Tim was undeterred. He defended his sources, John and Jeff, against the condemnations of Mark and Thad. “I’d like to provide some more context to make clear that the effort to dismiss them now as disgruntled, substandard, former trainers who should not be listened to is absurd,” Tim wrote on his own blog, “and in fact says more about the critics than Ventre and Jett.”

  The former trainers had not become “go-to sources for any muckraker that wanted to poke a stick in SeaWorld’s eye,” Tim continued. “I had to seek them out, and even then it took many conversations and a level of trust before they felt comfortable going on the record.”

  For the record, Tim added, despite what Thad and Mark had claimed about John Jett, “he left SeaWorld at the level of full trainer, he certainly was cleared for Shamu show water work (and has the videos to prove it), and he was indeed Tilikum’s team leader for many months before he left, writing the daily training goals up on a whiteboard in the trainer area.”

  * * *

  Suzanne Allee, th
e American video and production specialist who had worked at Loro Parque in the Canary Islands, took Naomi’s advice and put to paper her recollections and allegations about conditions for the four SeaWorld-owned killer whales on Spanish soil, and the trainers who worked with them. According to Suzanne, safety lapses were everywhere.

  For example, one young woman hired by chief trainer Miguel Diaz had panicked during a diving accident and tried to scramble up a gate that separated her from the orcas. Two of the whales grabbed her scuba gear through the bars and began to “thrash her about,” Suzanne said. The woman screamed. “There’s no doubt if she hadn’t been able to reach the top of the gate she would’ve been killed.”

  Another time, a member of Suzanne’s crew, David Quintero, was in the pool when the orca gate unexpectedly opened. Miguel Diaz had demanded the gate key from the “safety spotter,” who handed it over, a direct violation of protocol. Diaz opened the gate, unaware that David was in the pool. “The four orcas immediately took off towards David,” Suzanne said. “His frantic efforts to exit before they reached him only increased their curiosity and speed.” He was yanked out when they were just a few feet away.

  Suzanne was equally worried about what she saw as glaring violations of the US Animal Welfare Act, which arguably applied to these killer whales no matter where in the world they were. “Loro Parque management was unable to live up to the standards SeaWorld maintains for its trainers, and unwilling to provide the quality of life that SeaWorld claims to provide for its orcas. It became increasingly disillusioning to see how little support the on-site SeaWorld trainers actually received from their US superiors.”

  Less than five weeks after the orcas moved in, the main pool had to be shut down because the whales were tearing the coating off the walls and eating it, Suzanne contended. The park’s owner had selected a new material, Metflex, which was never before used in orca pools. “In the rush to open the show, they ignored the MetFlex supplier and sprayed the coating onto walls and floors while the cement was still damp from rain.”

  Just before the first show, in March 2006, all four orcas appeared backstage with Metflex strips hanging from their teeth and paint smeared on their heads. “The trainers were so desperate to go on with the show that they actually tried to clean the paint using isopropyl alcohol,” Suzanne said. The show was canceled, mostly because the whales wanted to eat the lining rather than obey commands.

  The “bio balls,” plastic canisters in water filters to reduce bubbles, also had problems. “They purchased the cheapest bio balls possible.” They were breaking up and seeping into the pools. One morning the whales were found “swimming in a stew of plastic shards.” The whales got sick and had to endure multiple endoscopies due to GI ailments, likely caused by the toxic chemicals they ate. Only then did SeaWorld tell Loro Parque to fix the pools for good. But after the repairs, the orcas continued to pick at the epoxy lining. It had become a learned behavior.

  Suzanne provided a few details on Tekoa’s 2007 attack on Claudia Vollhardt and, more important, on the Christmas Eve 2009 killing of Alexis Martinez by Keto. Unlike Tilikum, who never did water work, Keto was the “most reliable and oft-used orca in both dry and wet shows,” she said, “yet he killed his trainer.” Alexis’s body had been riddled with “various fractures, including every bone in his anterior rib cage, lesions on his vital organs, and the bite marks of an orca.”

  After two deaths in two months, it was time to confront SeaWorld on worker safety and animal well-being, Suzanne said. The problems in Tenerife were caused by a “grossly inadequate permit process and inadequate regulations under the MMPA concerning the exportation of captive marine mammals.” The Loro Parque “experiment” had been “an unmitigated disaster,” Suzanne wrote, “and for Alexis, his loved ones, and the four orcas, it is a tragedy, and it should never be allowed to happen again.”

  Meanwhile, the four US whales, “whose quality of life, quality of care, and quality of training are not comparable to SeaWorld standards,” should be removed from the venue at once. “There are simply too many people in charge” at Loro Parque, she alleged, “who don’t and can’t put the well-being of the animals as the priority.”

  Details of the Alexis Martinez disaster continued to trickle in. Naomi learned from OSHA’s Lara Padgett that footage of the attack had been sent to SeaWorld officials, who reviewed the video. Brian Rokeach from SeaWorld San Diego, who was involved in the 2006 incident with Orkid, was the visiting SeaWorld trainer at the time. He was acting as control trainer on the evening of December 24, 2009, during a rehearsal session, when Martinez was in the water with Keto. SeaWorld was not allowing Lara to interview Rokeach.

  “Apparently there was some sort of problem with Keto and Alexis,” Lara informed Naomi. “Brian recalled Keto to the stage but didn’t reinforce Keto to stay there. Then he motioned for Alexis to swim to stage. That’s when Keto broke from control with Brian and went after Alexis. He struck Alexis underwater, to the chest.” Alexis stayed under for about two and a half minutes. Staff members finally managed to move Keto out of the pool and dived down to recover their colleague. He reportedly had blood seeping from every orifice.

  * * *

  One week before the deadline for OSHA’s anxiously anticipated ruling, representatives from SeaWorld flew up to Atlanta to meet face-to-face with Cindy Coe, a leading official in OSHA’s Southeastern US region, Jason Garcia reported in the Orlando Sentinel. Neither party would discuss details, though SeaWorld said in a written statement it had “cooperated fully” with OSHA throughout the inquest. “Because the process has not yet reached its conclusion, it would be inappropriate to comment further.”

  Naomi learned two competing drafts of the OSHA findings were in circulation among Department of Labor attorneys in DC, Atlanta, and Tampa. The more lenient version was being championed by none other than Representative Alan Grayson (who would be defeated in the November 2010 election). The Orlando Sentinel reported that the liberal congressman had “intervened” in the probe on behalf of SeaWorld. Grayson confirmed to Jason Garcia that he had personally contacted OSHA to “discuss” the case, but refused to answer any other questions on the matter. Later, his chief of staff sent an e-mail to the Sentinel explaining that Grayson simply wanted to learn about the status of the investigation “first hand,” and to “share his own views and impressions regarding the matter.”

  Grayson also issued a prepared statement that gave SeaWorld’s safety record a thumbs-up: “As everyone knows, working with sharks and whales is inherently dangerous. But SeaWorld has done what it could to make that work as safe as possible. Beyond that, SeaWorld has raised people’s knowledge and understanding of cetaceans enormously, and contributed greatly to the well-being of Central Florida and our community.” Neither SeaWorld nor OSHA would comment on the matter, but captivity opponents cried foul.

  “None of this smells very good,” Naomi told Jason Garcia, who noted that SeaWorld had a “sizable presence” in DC and spent nearly $600,000 on Capitol Hill lobbyists in the first six months of 2010. Nearly two-thirds of that, $380,000, “occurred in the April-through-June quarter, amid the federal scrutiny triggered by the SeaWorld trainer’s death,” Garcia wrote.

  Howard Garrett, who shared Grayson’s progressive political values, was appalled by what he considered the lawmaker’s cloak-and-dagger machinations to save SeaWorld’s corporate hide. Howie was also deeply conflicted. “Yes, we want Grayson to be re-elected many times over, but this blatant, corrupt interference in due process is an assault on democratic values,” he wrote in an August 19 blog on the left-wing website Daily Kos. “Grayson is acting as a perfect example of the corporate stranglehold on the legislative process that he otherwise so effectively battles.” Then, in a “personal note” to Grayson, he let loose. “You have seriously soiled your reputation by trashing OSHA at a time when it is trying to perform its legislative mandate … in the face of a corporate bully. You have lined up alongside the bully this time, and that won’t be for
gotten.”5

  Howie, Naomi, Jeff Ventre, and other industry foes may have been troubled that Grayson was trying to derail action against SeaWorld, but in the end they needn’t have been.

  * * *

  On August 23, 2010—OSHA’s deadline to act in the Brancheau case—the agency slapped SeaWorld with the maximum penalties and sanctions allowed under federal law.6 It was, by far, the greatest legal blow ever delivered to SeaWorld, and it inflamed people within the company. Opponents were amazed, but gratified.

  OSHA had issued three citations against SeaWorld, including one that classified their violation as “willful,” something the company’s opponents were hoping for. “SeaWorld recognized the inherent risk of allowing trainers to interact with potentially dangerous animals,” said Cindy Coe, OSHA’s regional administrator in Atlanta, in a news release. “Nonetheless, it required its employees to work within the pool walls, on ledges and on shelves where they were subject to dangerous behavior by the animals.”

  Video footage in OSHA’s possession showed Tilikum “repeatedly striking and thrashing the trainer, and pulling her under water even as she attempted to escape.” SeaWorld had “forbidden trainers from swimming with this whale because of his dangerous past,” but still allowed them to interact with him, including touching him, while “lying on the pool edge in shallow water.”

  OSHA’s investigation had uncovered “an extensive history of unexpected and potentially dangerous incidents involving killer whales at its various facilities,” the agency said in atypically harsh language. “Despite this record, management failed to make meaningful changes to improve the safety of the work environment for its employees.”

  The “willful” citation was issued against SeaWorld for “failing to provide a workplace free from recognized hazards that were causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm to employees,” the OSHA document said, citing two reasons.