Beneath the Surface: Killer Whales, SeaWorld, and the Truth Beyond Blackfish

by John Hargrove

  For all of SeaWorld’s lovely mythology about orcas and humans getting along, the relationship is, well, complicated. The historical realities behind the fantasies are harsh.

  When Namu was trapped in the nets off the coast of Canada, members of his family pod gathered around him, trying to figure out how to free him. As Griffin transported him to Seattle by way of an ocean-pen towed by a boat, a number of orcas surrounded him, but were unable to solve the problem of setting Namu free. Namu himself emitted what one person recalled as painful shrieks and cries. Eventually, most of the bigger orcas—probably male—slipped away, leaving Namu alone with only the company of three whales: an older female and two younger ones, most probably his mother and his siblings. They stayed with him as long as they could. They too finally slipped away, unable to rescue him.

  Namu did not live beyond the year in which he was captured. Suffering from a bacterial infection, he rammed his head against the side of the pool in Griffin’s Seattle aquarium. He drowned. Some accounts say he was trying to escape. Others said he was confused and addled by the illness.

  Griffin was heartbroken—and, over the decades, he would tell reporters again and again that he missed Namu intensely. But he continued to hunt down whales, using explosives to herd them into areas where they could be netted. Several whales died at various stages of the capture process—including mothers killed in order to make it easier to take away their calves. And while SeaWorld officially says it now regrets the way it got hold of its first whales—that they were the victims of cruel methods—there is no doubt that Griffin supplied the marine park with the first several animals that made the company’s fortune, including the whale whose name is chanted and cheered at the park with every show.

  Shamu herself did not have a happy ending. Griffin had sent her on to SeaWorld because he said she and Namu turned out to dislike each other. Shamu was also recovering from trauma. Griffin had harpooned and killed her mother during the capture; Shamu had seen it happen.

  On April 19, 1971, SeaWorld decided to use Shamu in a promotional photo session with a model dressed in a bikini. The model, a secretary at SeaWorld, was to take three rides on Shamu. But by the second ride, the whale was showing signs of annoyance. On the third ride, Shamu refused to follow a command and, in the ensuing confusion, the model fell into the water. The whale bit her on the lower torso and limbs and, for several minutes, refused to let her go. The model survived the attack but spent several days in the hospital, where she received more than 100 stitches. She was scarred for life. In the ensuing lawsuit, SeaWorld provided documents that revealed that Shamu had bitten two people before, including a trainer, but no one had warned the model.

  Shamu was pulled from working the shows and she died four months after the incident. The cause of death was pyometra, a hormonal imbalance that causes blood poisoning by allowing bacteria to enter the whale’s uterine lining. It is an illness that almost never infects orcas in the wild.

  These were the open secrets of SeaWorld, the history everyone who worked there knew but very few cared to discuss out loud. They were inconvenient truths, the skeletons in the family closet. Nevertheless, Shamu’s name lives on in the signature spectacle of the theme park. More than just a captive whale, Shamu—nine years old, just a child really, when she died—had become a brand.

  Being hired as an apprentice trainer meant that I was going to be closer to the orcas. It did not automatically mean I was going to train them. Still, I considered myself lucky. There was no guarantee about which stadium a trainer would work in. An apprentice might end up spending his or her entire animal training career never working with orcas. SeaWorld management decided where trainers would be assigned based on their skills and how they might best benefit the company. I know countless trainers who spent their entire careers at Dolphin or Sea Lion Stadium even though they wanted nothing more than to be at Shamu Stadium.

  I had made sure I fit the Shamu bill. I was in the gym every day, lifting weights. You could see the effects in a wet suit, even though there was still more slack in it than I wanted there to be. It didn’t hurt to be young. I was eating right. I was working out. You can’t be shy or timid about wanting to work at Shamu. You can’t be passive. You’ve got to let people know what you want. You’ve got to show people that you have the skills—both animal training expertise and athleticism—to be the choice they are looking for.

  It must have worked. In 1993, less than two months after I turned 20, I not only got the apprentice job in San Antonio, I was immediately assigned to Shamu Stadium. I was ecstatic. My dreams were coming true faster than I expected. I quit college—after all, I had enrolled only to earn the degree I had thought necessary to apply for the job. I was ready to throw myself at work.

  As a young wannabe, every time I spoke to the trainers, I was intensely focused on how to get into Shamu Stadium, not just on how to be hired by SeaWorld. I was always curious about the age at which the other trainers knew they wanted to join SeaWorld and what their path to the job was, often comparing myself to them. Occasionally, I’d meet trainers who, despite years of experience at SeaWorld, weren’t at Shamu. I’d be surprised. Why would anyone not want to be working with the killer whales? Some said they didn’t want to take, or think they could pass, the much more difficult swim test at Shamu Stadium; others felt that Shamu Stadium was a stressful environment and no fun. Or they were afraid of the whales. I didn’t understand that. I was attracted to the pressure, knowing every move you made was under scrutiny, that your life might be on the line.

  To officially qualify for Shamu Stadium, even as an apprentice trainer, I had to pass another swim test. This time, it would take place in the stadium itself, where the water was even colder—48 to 52 degrees Fahrenheit—in order to limit the bacterial growth that might harm the whales. It was 12 to 15 degrees colder than the water for the dolphins—and that was already about 15 to 20 degrees cooler than a regular pool. Such low temperatures can sometimes cause what is called shallow water blackout, a loss of consciousness from lack of oxygen, exacerbated by the low temperatures, which can kill you. To make it more difficult, instead of a 25-foot dive, I would have to swim to the bottom of the Shamu Stadium front show pool, which is about 40 feet deep, to retrieve a five-pound weight. Meanwhile, the single-breath, beneath-the-surface swim was 140 feet long, 20 feet longer than the one required at the Dolphin Stadium pool. Immediately after, I had to do a timed 250-foot freestyle swim. I also had to be able to exhibit upper-body strength by grabbing a ledge high above the surface of the pool and pulling myself up from the water and onto land. All of this had to take place within ten minutes. But I was confident. The test itself was the least of my worries. A very personal challenge had emerged a couple of weeks before.

  On my first day of work, I showed up at SeaWorld San Antonio and, after I was done at Human Resources, a white Chevrolet truck pulled up to drive me to the main stadium. I was stunned when I saw who the driver was: Mark McHugh, my former childhood idol and now boss at Shamu Stadium. He was very encouraging and said I had shown great skill and athletic ability during my first swim test. That was a huge boost to my ego and my confidence. Things were going well, I thought, and this was just day one on the job.

  As we spoke, however, McHugh casually said, “I almost voted not to hire you because I thought you might be gay.”

  I said nothing but I felt as if I had been kicked in the stomach by someone who was not just one of my bosses but also a person I had idolized as a hero for years. It hurt. I was suddenly afraid of losing the job I had spent all my life trying to win. I knew I would have no problem passing the swim test at Shamu Stadium. I was prepared for it. McHugh’s remark, however, triggered my first career crisis. I quickly decided what I had to do: an important part of me had to go back beneath the surface, back into the closet. It wasn’t what I had expected. But I was willing to do anything to work with the whales.

  Even after b
eing assigned to Shamu Stadium, I was not yet allowed to touch the animals or interact with them in any way. I certainly could not be in the water with them. A senior trainer had to be nearby whenever the apprentices were close to the edge of the pool. The whales can easily come out past the pool’s perimeter and grab you. Even setting up buckets of fish in certain spots required you to be spotted by a senior trainer. But I was still nearer than I had ever been to the whales. It thrilled me to be in such close proximity to them, to discover things that I had never noticed before and to learn the way SeaWorld worked to keep its great marine stars alive and seemingly healthy.

  The first whale I saw after I got my job was Kotar, the largest of the five whales in San Antonio at the time. You couldn’t miss him. He weighed approximately 8,000 pounds. In the SeaWorld universe, only Tilikum in Florida—at 12,000 pounds—and, as he grew, Ulises in San Diego—approximately 10,000 pounds now—were more massive. Corky, a female in the San Diego facility, was about the same size: 8,200 pounds.

  Yet even with an amazing specimen like Kotar, many things were amiss. For one, his dorsal fin was collapsed. It was a physical characteristic he shared with all of the adult male orcas at SeaWorld. I would soon learn that the cause is confinement: floating motionless at the surface of the pool without support for the height and weight of the dorsal fin leads to the collapse. This was even more pronounced at the Texas and Florida parks, where heat is a factor. Captive whales bake in the sun and suffer from sunburn and dehydration. Orcas in the wild spend much of their time fully submerged. SeaWorld’s pools may be large in human scale but they do not in any way approach the breadth and depth the orcas have available to them in the ocean. In captivity, the broad sail-like dorsal fins so characteristic of male orcas remain exposed to the air and to the sun more often than those of killer whales in the wild.

  Even as an apprentice trainer, I realized how fragile these creatures were. But the observations just made me redouble my efforts to care for them. I believed in SeaWorld’s declared mission: that allowing humans to see these magnificent creatures at the marine park would help preserve the species in the wild because people would appreciate them and contribute to conservation efforts.

  Like a nurse at a hospital, I was taught to observe and record each whale’s behavior patterns and note them down in the meticulous documents kept by SeaWorld. I literally watched every breath a whale took at certain points, multiple times per day. Orcas will breathe once a minute; if they are performing a particularly strenuous part, they might breathe two to three times a minute depending on how much effort they have to expend. What is normal depends on the scenario. If their respiration is abnormally elevated, this can indicate something else is going on that involves their health. If I suspected an abnormality, I would immediately inform a supervisor. We would then monitor the whale’s respirations again during a five-minute period and also evaluate what was happening socially between the specific whale and the others in the park. If the rate was still above normal limits, we would call the veterinarians, while continuing to record respirations and observing the whale.

  Counting the number of times each whale breathes during a five-minute interval multiple times a day was an important chore. As was food preparation. It was my chief introduction to the immense efforts required to keep the animals alive in captivity. Food preparation sounds too professional. What I was doing was filling buckets with fish.

  An individual whale can eat from 150 to 300 pounds of fish a day. Huge amounts are delivered constantly, arriving at the park frozen solid. The apprentices and the trainers thaw the fish overnight, running water over the herring, mackerel, smelt, salmon and, in California, squid. Each whale had a specific diet that required making certain the buckets contained the proper proportions and percentages of each fish. Then the buckets would have to be weighed, heavily iced and refrigerated to keep the food from spoiling. When it was time for the training sessions or shows to begin, the apprentices would lug 30-pound buckets of fish in each hand, running to and from poolside toward the trainers they were assigned to shadow. The fish had to be constantly available so that the trainers could reward the whales when they chose to.

  The bucket brigade continued to toil once the show and sessions were over. (During certain times of year, there would be fewer shows a day so we’d make sure the whales were parceled out their daily quota of fish through learning sessions.) We’d have to scrub the stainless steel buckets clean because of the accumulation of fish scales and what we called “gack”—the crud left over from mashed-up fish and squid bits that solidified into bacteria-attracting gunk. Insufficiently cleaned buckets would attract the bugs that can kill whales. Every single scale had to be scrubbed and picked off. The supervisors would check the buckets, which were then bleached and hung out to dry.

  Soon enough, the excitement of arriving at SeaWorld San Antonio was over and work settled into a predictable routine. One night, I sat down exhausted after scrubbing and thought, “This is what I passed the swim tests for? Icing and bucketing fish?” I had become part of the Shamu Stadium team but I didn’t expect to be doing so much scut work and backbreaking manual labor. Apprentice trainers were also constantly in scuba gear helping clean the pools or looking for any foreign objects the whales might accidentally swallow.

  But that backbreaking tedium was incredibly important. In the wild, the orcas find their food in the ocean. There are no schools of fish for the whales to chase and feed on at SeaWorld. Without that freedom, the captive orcas were completely at SeaWorld’s mercy.

  We easily went through a 1,000 pounds of fish a day to keep the five orcas in San Antonio at that time fed. Every week, we monitored their weight to make sure it was optimal. Each of the SeaWorld parks has a large stainless steel scale in a section of one of the shallower back pools that the whales are trained to slide up on. They have to position themselves perfectly on the scale, without a fluke or flipper hanging off. If part of the whale touched the water, it would affect the accuracy of the measurement on the digital display. Precision was critical.

  If a whale had gained or lost too much weight, we’d adjust his or her diet by increasing or decreasing the percentages of certain fish in their base level of daily food. The herring, mackerel, smelt and salmon all have different caloric values and we’d vary the mix according to what the whale needed to get to his or her target weight. The basis for how much food a whale got was constantly in flux—among the factors that we calculated into their diet were age, the time of year, activity level and pregnancy. In California, we included squid to help with hydration because of the mollusk’s high water content. Even when the whales were at a healthy weight, almost all of them hated squid. It was something you had to train them to accept and eat.

  The trainers taught the whales what might be called “eating etiquette.” They had to learn to keep their heads up with their chins on the pool wall and not to play with their food. Sometimes, when whales were too heavy, they would lower their heads just far enough so that their mouths filled with water, causing all the fish to sink to the bottom. That would be a reason for the whales to break from control with their trainer (what is called splitting) and submerge to play with the food. It’s the equivalent of a child who isn’t hungry being sat at a table for dinner, picking and playing with the food and not eating. Heavy or overweight whales don’t have appetites or an interest in food.

  As fascinating as learning about orcas was—even from my junior perch—the hard labor of apprenticeship frustrated me. A salary of $6 an hour and no health insurance did not help either. However, all of that motivated me to look for a way to move up the ranks.

  San Antonio was the newest of the SeaWorld parks. It was also the biggest in terms of square footage. For its part, the park in Orlando was praised by management for the precision of its showmanship during the Shamu Stadium shows. But neither San Antonio nor Orlando had the prestige of San Diego, the oldest of the facilities.
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  The California whales had always had a significantly larger repertoire and higher criteria—that is, more exacting limits in terms of accuracy and difficulty—for the behaviors they were trained in. As a result, the whales were in better shape and more motivated to perform. For example, Takara held the record for bows: 60. She had the stamina and willingness to do it. Good luck getting a whale in Texas to do more than four or five bows in a row without terminating the session!

  As an ambitious apprentice, I constantly inquired about how things were done—and was fascinated by what I heard about California’s methods. The International Marine Animal Trainers’ Association conference used to hand out awards every year for the best new behaviors learned by whales. The California park always took home prizes for categories such as Best New Novel Behavior or Best Criteria, the latter being awarded for achievements in ever-higher levels of difficulty, say, the fastest-swimming whale or the orca who performed the most bows or rose to a significant height out of the water. SeaWorld San Diego was always on top when it came to getting the whales to do the most creative and novel acts, a testament to the facility’s mastery of the behavioral sciences. Senior management in Texas and Florida conceded to me and others that the San Diego trainers were the best in applying the principles of behavioral science—that is, they were what was called the “strongest behaviorally”—and that the whales in that facility had the highest criteria and largest repertoires. I made up my mind that I wanted to end up in California.

  Despite being the newest of the SeaWorlds, San Antonio did not have the resources that had been poured into San Diego and Orlando. The trainers had to do their work with less. Still, it had its advantages. Of all the parks I’ve worked in, San Antonio had the cleanest facilities. The Fish Room where we prepared the food for the whales was spotless. You certainly wouldn’t find a scale in a cleaned bucket. Or under-iced fish. In that part of the care and feeding of whales, San Antonio was exceptional. But, in other aspects, it wasn’t San Diego.