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

by David Kirby

  Tim Zimmermann and the Orca Aware members knew that SeaWorld was in the early phases of developing a spare-air system. Tim, who was busy with another assignment, collected the four former trainers’ OSHA statements against spare air and forwarded them to the Orlando Sentinel’s Jason Garcia. Garcia ran with it.

  The “SeaWorld Four” were now united and going public in a coordinated campaign against their former employer. On September 13, Garcia published his story, “Former Whale Trainers Criticize SeaWorld Safety Proposal.” John called spare air a public-relations ploy and Jeff denounced it as “a phony” solution. It might be useful “when a killer whale is holding a trainer underwater but not otherwise brutalizing the trainer,” he said. “But it’s not a real solution.”

  Spokesman Fred Jacobs said the spare-air plan was “very early” in the research and development stage and the company still had to establish its feasibility.

  That same morning, Sam appeared on the popular Fox & Friends show.

  Sam was “not alone” in her accusations, noted anchorwoman Gretchen Carlson. “That’s right,” Sam said, “a group of trainers now believe that, for the safety of all trainers, they shouldn’t go back in the water.” Former staff speaking out against SeaWorld was “unprecedented,” Sam said, adding that she hoped others would “come forward who actually witnessed incidents in the past.”

  Sam’s appearance triggered a flurry of comments on her Facebook page, some from trainers still at SeaWorld. “I took that interview personally. I wish I didn’t,” one wrote. “Never in all the years we have known each other have you ever expressed the slightest concern for the trainers.… How long were you at Shamu? Months? I’m sorry but that hardly qualifies you as an expert.”

  Sam wrote back quickly: “In order for me to live in integrity, I absolutely have to speak on behalf of not only Dawn and all the other injured or deceased trainers, but also on behalf of all the whales who have died prematurely.”

  Another trainer was more circumspect: “Ultimately, Dawn made a mistake, but I believe ‘the system’ allowed the environment for that kind of mistake with Tilikum to occur. It could have been any one of us.” SeaWorld had eighteen years to make Tilikum safer through training him how to respond appropriately. And though trainers knew there was a risk, “upper, upper, management have created an ‘umbrella’ of training methods that have lulled people into believing these animals are safer than they really are. They have been marketed and showcased that way with the Shamu brand over the years.”

  Sam wished the conflicted trainer peace and predicted, “‘Something’ good will come out of it all.” The contact agreed—something positive had to result from Dawn’s death “because that’s how I sleep at night.”

  * * *

  Less than a month after Sumar perished of “mysterious causes” in San Diego (his necropsy later revealed a twisted intestine),3 Kalina, the original Baby Shamu and daughter of the venerable Katina, died in Orlando, on Monday, October 4. She was twenty-five. Like Sumar, Kalina died suddenly and with little warning. She had exhibited no signs of illness as recently as Friday the first, and was eating well over the weekend. But by Monday afternoon, she began showing signs of discomfort and quickly died early that evening.4

  The celebrated Kalina, the first successfully bred killer whale in captivity, was the third to die at SeaWorld in just four months and the twenty-fourth in twenty-five years. “The trio of deaths comes amid what may be the most challenging period in Orlando-based SeaWorld Entertainment’s nearly 50-year corporate history,” Jason Garcia wrote in the Sentinel.

  SeaWorld pushed back. Spokeswoman Becca Bides told Garcia there was “no credible evidence” to suggest that killer whales at SeaWorld were stressed. The company had achieved twenty-six successful births over twenty-five years, and seventeen of those whales were still alive. They were all “content and healthy,” Bides contended, “a fact supported by medical, scientific, and behavioral evidence.”

  Naomi Rose appeared on Good Morning America to discuss the loss of both Kalina and Sumar. “When they’re confined, I think they’re under stress, I think they’re at the very least very bored; and both stress and boredom, and depression, can kill you.” She added that the three whales who died were twenty-one, twelve, and twenty-five, which was “not even middle-aged for wild orcas.” Orcas were just too big for life in a tank. “SeaWorld is telling you otherwise, but they are misleading the public.”

  ABC coanchor George Stephanopoulos, who delivered the story live from Orlando, read a SeaWorld statement on air. “Animals in our care live and die just as they do in the wild,” it began. Naomi had heard all this before, but maybe, she thought, this time it might ring hollow to the public. In terms of longevity, foraging, social behaviors, natural ranges, and “activity budgets,” the comparison was patently disingenuous, if not borderline Orwellian.

  Fortunately for her, the lead reporter on the story, Matt Gutman, told Stephanopoulos that in the wild, orcas “live forty years; in captivity, twenty years.” Some wild whales lived up to eighty years, he added, “and clearly that’s not happening in these parks.”

  “It’s not even middle age,” Stephanopoulos concurred, echoing Naomi’s words. More than seven months had passed since Dawn had died, and Naomi was still struck by how radically the national media had altered its once-fawning posture toward orca display.

  Later that day, Naomi issued an uncompromising statement in an HSUS press release on the spate of deaths. Kalina’s passing “should be the final word: orcas do not belong in tanks. With the tragic death of trainer Dawn Brancheau and these three orca deaths, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that a 45-year experiment has resulted in a spectacular failure.”

  * * *

  Naomi had not forgotten about the troubles allegedly plaguing Loro Parque. She marshaled her considerable resources to see that Suzanne Allee’s disturbing allegations about SeaWorld’s orcas at the park’s Orca Ocean stadium were heard by the proper US authorities.

  Allee had refined her written eyewitness account into a fourteen-page white paper titled “SeaWorld’s ‘Excess Orcas’ at Loro Parque.” In early October 2010, Naomi delivered copies to her contacts at NMFS, APHIS, the federal Marine Mammal Commission, and the House Committee on Natural Resources. Allee’s accusations about death, danger, and toxic pool-lining material being peeled away by whales had not yet been made public.

  Naomi, joined by Courtney Vail at WDCS and Susan Millward at the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), arranged a series of meetings to introduce Allee to the federal regulators, present them with the evidence, and request that they investigate all potential violations of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Naomi wanted NMFS to confiscate the animals if Loro Parque did not improve conditions or if SeaWorld refused to repatriate the animals. She realized the request was a long shot: It would involve complex application of US and international law, not to mention potential diplomatic turmoil between Washington and Madrid.

  A few weeks later, SeaWorld responded to Allee’s accusations in a six-page letter to NMFS written by Brad Andrews, chief zoological officer of SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment, and copied to the deputy administrator of APHIS.

  Andrews rejected nearly every point in Allee’s paper: “At no time during Ms. Allee’s employment did she express concerns involving killer whales. These baseless allegations are troubling only because they appear to reflect the bias of a disgruntled former employee which was used by HSUS, WDCS, and AWI to advance a political agenda.”

  Park operations and zoological practices at both SeaWorld and Loro Parque were “widely acknowledged by industry experts as exceeding high standards, and we stand by them.” Andrews did acknowledge that the SeaWorld whales had been exposed to “bio balls” from the broken filtration system (though he insisted the animals did not ingest the material) and had torn and swallowed pieces of the Metflex lining in the pools. “Some ingestion and regurgitation of MetFlex was documented,” Andrews admitted, but the coating was ultimatel
y replaced.

  “In any event, NMFS has no authority to confiscate the killer whales as the HSUS requests,” Andrews told the agency. Nor could NMFS revoke the killer whale display permit now that the animals were at Loro Parque, which, as a foreign facility, had no MMPA permit. “There is nothing for the Secretary [of Commerce] to revoke,” he concluded.

  Naomi was hardly surprised by the rebuke from SeaWorld. But she remained hopeful that NMFS might intervene and inspect Loro Parque. She would wait many months for an answer.

  * * *

  John Jett, the scientist and PhD, wanted to publish a paper on the effect of captivity on orcas. John and Jeff Ventre had been bandying the idea around for months. They had asked Mark Simmons during their lakeside reunion, back in May, if he wanted to coauthor a manuscript and submit it to a peer-reviewed journal for consideration. Mark didn’t respond. Now, in early November of 2010, John and Jeff decided it was time to get on their computers and start their research in earnest. If they were going to make claims against their former employer, they would need hard science to get published and advance their case.

  As Jeff and John organized the structure of their paper, John Kielty was tirelessly filing FOIA requests to help reconstruct the entire Marine Mammal Inventory Report, and searching online for media accounts of captive-orca deaths. Part of the paper was an extension of the “Five Medical Issues with Captivity” Jeff had supplied to Tom Ashbrook for the On Point segment he did back in July. Ashbrook mentioned Jeff and read the list on the air: (1) chronic tooth decay; (2) retinal damage from looking up at the sun; (3) collapsed dorsal fins; (4) forced social reorganization; and (5) pathological behaviors from “living in a blue box.”

  The physician and the biology professor fully intended to write a paper suitable for peer review, but the rush of outside events quickly overtook them. In November, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission set a time and venue for the big trial—Secretary of Labor v. SeaWorld of Florida, LLC—in which the company would fight to overturn the potentially crippling citation issued by OSHA. The trial—actually, a legal hearing presided over by an administrative law judge employed by the Labor Department—would begin on February 14, 2011, in Orlando.

  Jeff and John wanted to have a document in circulation by then, but with just three months to write it had no time for a peer-reviewed article.

  * * *

  The weird and woeful saga of Tilikum—taken from his mother, sent to shore in Iceland and from there to Canada and Florida, forced to live with whales who abused him, involved in three human deaths—had filled the pages of newspapers for decades. But no stories about Tilikum’s bizarre life—even in supermarket tabloids—were as lurid as the day that rocker Tommy Lee took on SeaWorld’s vaunted artificial insemination program for orcas.

  Lee, the bad-boy drummer from the heavy metal band Mötley Crüe, was a PETA supporter. He blasted SeaWorld for refusing “to release this frustrated whale because he is your chief sperm bank,” he said in a letter to Terry Prather, who became president of SeaWorld Orlando in October.5

  Lee said he knew how SeaWorld staff extracted the whale’s semen: “Having someone get into the pool and masturbate him with a cow’s vagina filled with hot water.” Even during his most frenetic days, he said, “I never could’ve imagined something so sick and twisted.” Lee asked, how could SeaWorld say that trainers did not get close to Tilikum anymore “when they are jacking him off?” That, he said, was “about as ‘direct’ as it gets.”

  Lee’s letter was posted online by celebrity-tracker TMZ, and it went viral. The tale caused a sensation on the Internet. But SeaWorld went on the counteroffensive. The following day Fred Jacobs fired off a sneering letter to TMZ: “If Mr. Lee’s information on Tilikum and SeaWorld’s artificial insemination program for killer whales comes from PETA we’re not surprised that it’s wrong. PETA is as careless with facts as they are extreme in their views.” Jacobs asserted that “collecting semen for whale artificial insemination is similar to techniques employed in managing livestock or other species for zoological display.” Contrary to the rocker’s assertions, trainers “do not now nor have they ever entered the water with Tilikum for this purpose. Whatever his views on SeaWorld, Mr. Lee would be wise to spend more time checking his facts.”

  Lee was also incorrect about the cow vaginas, although SeaWorld did at one point use artificial vaginas (AVs), which were considered standard practice.

  Lee’s letter and SeaWorld’s response—which provoked “tweets” (and titters) around the world and T-shirts demanding FREE TILLY’S WILLY!—were written up by Colleen and John at The Orca Project. One of their self-proclaimed SeaWorld insiders explained the semen-extraction procedure to them, and they published it.6

  These days, trainers masturbated the bulls with latex gloves and K-Y jelly, TOP’s source said. “The animals already know how to roll over. It’s a basic requirement for accessing their tails and genital slits, and other husbandry. It’s a well-rewarded behavior, and the whales are usually cooperative.” Sometimes, other whales were brought in to “stimulate the whale undergoing the AI session. Interestingly, it was usually another male.” Any bulge or erection was rewarded with fish and manual stimulation. “The whale eventually figures out you’re stimulating it in an erotic way. The ejaculate is stored in a bag or Nalgene plastic bottle.”

  According to John and Colleen, Tilikum had sired ten living calves and was grandfather to three more. SeaWorld owned nineteen captive-born whales, and thirteen of them were his blood relatives. “This means that the gene pool is dangerously lacking diversity,” TOP reported.

  Sam Berg, who had studied artificial insemination and animal genetics at Cornell, discussed SeaWorld’s breeding programs with her former colleagues, the ex-trainers. “They are just trying to make more whales, which jeopardizes the health of their population,” she said in an e-mail to Jeff, John, and Carol. “I don’t know if there’s any regard for the health of the whales that they are creating. I think you could say that SW has created more of an ‘inbreeding program.’”

  * * *

  By the end of 2010, Jeff and John had made considerable progress on their captivity paper. The OSHA hearing was looming and they rushed to complete it. John was coming up with some shocking numbers on survivorship, and Jeff was discovering revealing information, including on captive-orca tooth damage and pulpotomy (drilling) and orca husbandry. Jeff also had a copy of the inspection report compiled by APHIS when animal health inspectors went to SeaWorld after Dawn died to investigate Tilikum and look at his husbandry records. John Kielty had obtained the APHIS report through the Freedom of Information Act and posted it to the Orca Aware list.

  Jeff shared his progress with a few close allies, including Howard Garrett. Howie forwarded a draft of the paper to Ingrid Visser, PhD, head of the Orca Research Trust, a New Zealand nonprofit, and an authority on wild orcas in the waters of New Zealand, Antarctica, Argentina, and Papua New Guinea. Dr. Visser had worked on the Keiko project and produced several scientific papers and documentary films on orcas. Visser shared a copy with Dr. Lori Marino, the friend and colleague of Naomi Rose’s who testified at the House subcommittee oversight hearing in April.

  Lori, who forwarded a copy to Naomi, wrote back to Jeff in December, saying, “This is the beginning of what could be a major paper. I would be happy and enthusiastic to help you turn it into something that could be submitted to a major journal.” Ingrid also urged them to publish.

  Naomi sent Jeff an e-mail in late January that was also supportive, but noted that one of their statistics was also calculated in Small and DeMaster’s landmark paper in 1995. She urged them to acknowledge the previous work and to complete the calculations that would update the annual survival rates (ASRs) for captive orcas, a necessary endeavor given how many years had passed since 1995.

  Jeff and John did not welcome Naomi’s opinion on their paper, though the interjection was softened somewhat by her adding: “The information about CAU
SES of this higher mortality that you discuss in your paper, particularly the issue of poor dental health, is new (at least outside the high walls of SeaWorld!) and deserves publication.”

  Naomi Rose had finally made the acquaintance of Jeff and John—albeit electronically, and not on the best of footings. Naomi was wary of animal trainers—even former trainers who had turned against the industry—but she had to admit that Jeff and John had gotten a good start on an important paper. Perhaps most important, she wrote, “Your voices, as former trainers with a science background, carry enormous weight in this debate, which has gained such tremendous momentum since Dawn Brancheau’s tragic death.” She added, “I hope together all of us who have been working to change the public’s mind about the acceptability of orcas in captivity can work to push society past the tipping point.”

  The paper, “Keto and Tilikum Express the Stress of Orca Captivity,”7 was ready to go in February. SeaWorld, however, was not ready to go to trial. The company requested—and received—a postponement of the hearing until April 24. Had Jeff and John known the trial would be delayed, they would have held off on releasing the paper and aimed for publication in a peer-reviewed journal instead.

  “The practice of keeping killer whales in captivity has proven to be detrimental to the health and safety of animals and trainers alike,” John and Jeff’s paper began. They described the killings of Alexis Martinez and Dawn Brancheau, exactly two months apart.

  Tilikum, they stated, was “representative of the many social and health issues plaguing captive orcas.” The APHIS report on Tilikum that John Kielty had obtained, for example, showed he was “on antibiotic and antifungal drugs for an ‘inflammatory issue’ with an elevated white blood cell count beginning ‘about February 11’ (2010),” and lasting until at least the day he attacked Dawn: Tilikum was fighting off an infection when he attacked.

  The authors said captive orcas were subject to boredom, social strife and aggression, and acting out. They discussed the large range of wild orcas versus the cramped quarters of captivity, and they talked about dorsal fin collapse. They claimed “poor dentition can lead to a host of diseases including valvular heart disease, gingivitis, pneumonia, stroke, and heart attack.” The open bore holes left behind by “pulpotomies” created a direct route for pathogens to enter the blood, “where they can then be deposited into the tissue of various organs throughout the body, such as the heart or kidney.” Were bore holes contributing to poor health at SeaWorld? We may never know. “Unfortunately, orca necropsies are mostly done in-house, by park personnel, and under a relative cloak of secrecy. Could the cause of pneumonia be bacteria carried to the lungs from rotting food plugs or tooth decay? This is unclear due to insufficient research and lack of scrutiny.”