At the point I believed she was ready to collaborate, I dived into her side of the water and, when I surfaced, asked one of the trainers on land to throw me a few fish—herring and mackerel—so I could reward Freya immediately as she approached me. That was when the trouble began.
After surviving the encounter and analyzing the incident, I realized that Freya was nursing a grievance. She did not like the fact that Val was receiving so much attention while she was stewing behind her gate. She was the dominant whale, after all. In previous sessions, when we were attempting to get Freya and Val to perform together, she would try to race ahead of him and displace him in the water to take precedence. When a solo trainer was having fun with another whale—and Freya wasn’t part of it—she would become jealous. If they were in the same pool together, she would move up and crowd out the other orca to take up the attention from the trainer. Once I figured that out, I paid her the right amount of attention—more than just fish and a touch, offering her real interaction—as I trained the subdominant whales simultaneously. She learned to accept the fact that I worked with the other whales—not just her. But the relationship required constant maintenance.
Freya was a challenge, always out to remind you of her rank and, sometimes, taking offense at the subtlest of slights. But, after my encounter with her—the biggest and most serious aggression of my career—we figured out how to work with each other. You might say that I trained her. But that would be generous. More accurately, she had made certain that I had learned the right way to treat her. Once that was established, the monster would become an angel to me. But now I know: monster and angel can be one and the same.
Food is the edge humans have over the captive whales of SeaWorld. The orcas know that. SeaWorld says it uses food to reinforce and reward the whales for performing the behaviors that go into the Shamu Stadium spectacle. The corporation insists that it never inflicts corporal punishment on the animals. It also says that it never deprives them of food for not obeying or learning fast enough. The first part is true because it is physically impossible for humans to use pain to teach the whales a lesson. It would be ineffective. Elephant trainers using their hooked prods to keep the pachyderms in line have the advantage of being able to maneuver on land and being nimble on their feet; humans have nowhere to stand—or run—if they had to use physical punishment against a whale. When you are in the water with an orca, she or he holds all the cards.
The overpowering reality, however, is that the whales of SeaWorld are completely dependent on human beings for food. The orcas get not only nutrition but hydration from the food they eat. The huge marine mammals do not “drink” to get the liquid they need to stay alive. They can only hydrate by absorbing the water content of the fish they eat. Even if food deprivation was rarely used, the whales know all too well that it is a constant possibility.
SeaWorld says that its animals receive all of their food regardless of how they perform throughout the day. This is false. The corporation would like the public to believe that withholding food is a practice relegated to the past. The reality is that it was still happening even as I resigned in August 2012. I know of whales whose food base usually ranged from 180 to 250 pounds per day being restricted to as little as 59 pounds of food. The records reflect this wasn’t just a single-day abnormality. It was carried out over multiple days and multiple weeks and with multiple whales. Those orcas did not get the amount of food calculated to maintain their weight on any day of that entire week.
There are only a couple of situations in which it is acceptable to withhold food from whales: if it is a matter of health or a medical situation; or if the whales simply refuse to eat, even after the trainers have tried multiple times to give them all of their food. The records show no evidence of those conditions; the whale’s food was withheld for behavioral reasons—that is, to make sure the whales performed to SeaWorld’s expectations.
The deprivation I am referring to is vindictive and more insidious. In accordance with SeaWorld policies, trainers have reduced the amount of fish that a whale needs to eat daily—sometimes by more than two-thirds—to remind the orca who provides sustenance at the marine park. It is not done often and it has a mixed record of effectiveness. But it has been one of the trainer’s options for making sure a whale understands that it is best to cooperate. Because SeaWorld meticulously documents the lives, health and constantly shifting psychology of the orcas, the company has kept records of depriving whales of fish to make them behave or perform to the standards set by the trainers. But because such a form of “behavior modification” would sound barbarous to human audiences, the practice has been kept secret. It would not be good for business to say that the stars of the show were not given food in order to make them perform. But it has happened. I have been part of inflicting the policy myself at the request of a supervisor.
Imagine the situation in human terms and the closest institution that comes to mind is a prison, where the inmates are completely dependent on the guards and the system to provide them with the basic needs of life: food and water. It is a terrifying and depressing metaphor for trainers who love the whales and who feel responsible for them. Why? Because in the analogy, even if the prisoner-whale decides that it likes some of the guards better than others, in the end, they are all still guards, part of the same system that oppresses them. You can be a prisoner and genuinely like a specific prison guard—and that prison guard may genuinely like you—but that doesn’t take away the fact that you’re in prison.
There are usually—but not always—observable precursors to aggression. Some examples are when the muscles on a whale’s back tighten, when their eyes are opened wide and strained, when you hear certain types of vocalizations. You have to be alert to when whales drop their heads or avoid making eye contact or when they pull away from you. An erection in a male whale is another precursor to a likely incident of aggression, the consequence of sexual frustration, which occurs quite often in captivity.
But many other precursors of killer whale aggression can be subtle. To its credit, SeaWorld is assiduous in documenting every human-whale interaction not just to monitor the orcas’ health but to detect whether a whale is on the verge of an episode that might prove dangerous to trainers. As illustrated by what I could describe as Freya’s “jealousy” over her son Val, a whale may become aggressive because of a history or pattern of events, not just because of something happening at a given moment.
The trainers were supposed to report everything. Every time we called the whales over to begin an interaction it was documented—even if it was just to feed the orca. You’d have to note down how long the interaction lasted, if anything out of the norm happened—how well the whales performed the behaviors we asked them for, how many were correct or incorrect. Which trainer was working the whale? How much food was the orca fed? Was any medication being provided at the time? Were the whales perhaps exhibiting the most recognizable precursors associated with aggression or illness? Were there any other indications that a whale might be in the middle of a social altercation with other whales? This may in popular terms be described as quarreling, though it is much more complex than that—and is always a sign of potential aggression. Did a whale eat well or slowly or refuse food? You’d have to write down whether the interaction with the whale was part of a learning or a training session, a show, playtime or relationship session, exercise, or whether it was what we called “husbandry”—collecting urine samples or dentistry or veterinarian work. (We used the acronym HELPRS as shorthand for the interactions we’d get into with the orcas—husbandry, exercise, learning, play, relationship, show.) We’d rate the whale’s responsiveness on a scale of zero (the poorest) to five (perfect behavior). If a whale had a poor session or show, the assessment was communicated to all trainers who were approved to work with that whale. Repeated poor behavior could indicate something else was happening with the whale—perhaps something health-related.
Watching for patterns helped. But the dynamics of a whale’s relationship with the other whales in the park could also change rapidly and contribute to aggression. Trainers had to be constantly vigilant to make sure working conditions remained safe for all. The social dynamics among the whales changed constantly—which whales were getting along or not getting along could shift within minutes. At the bare minimum, there was always an apprentice trainer on hand whose job was to observe the whales when the more experienced trainers were not poolside. In the beginning of my career, apprentices and trainers would be assigned to 4 p.m.-to-midnight and midnight-to-8 a.m. shifts to make sure the whales were constantly monitored. Toward the end of my career, the night shifts were given to a security guard. That apprentice’s job would be to alert a senior trainer or supervisor if sexual activity was observed or certain whales were fighting, which could influence our plans for which whales to use for shows.
Sometimes, a whale would choose not to participate in a session or not to come over when called. If it was the dominant female, the other whales would more often than not choose not to participate as well. The dominant female orca had the power to shut down the entire group of whales at Shamu. The subdominant whales would not risk being raked by her—that is scratched or cut deeply by a whale’s teeth, like the wounds that might be inflicted on flesh by a rake—by choosing to work with the trainers. Sometimes, you had no choice but to give the orcas time to work out whatever communal killer whale issue was vexing them. Trying to press the matter could potentially produce an aggressive incident. For the sake of peace and safety, the show did not always go on.
In San Diego, where whales were provided more diverse types of rewards, there were on average only two cancellations a year. But in Texas, there were years when the show was cancelled an average of once every week.
Being a trainer was hard work, and it didn’t mean I was exempt from the scut work. Everyone had to do their share scrubbing buckets. Meanwhile, trainers had to work in as many as seven Shamu shows a day. I had never been happier or prouder in my life.
But there was more to learn—much of it painful—and the most important lessons were life-changing. The trainers would have their doubts and frustrations about the conditions under which the whales lived. We knew how assiduous the company was about monitoring whale behavior and that registered in our minds as significant proof that SeaWorld cared for the orcas. If our faith in SeaWorld as a corporation wavered, we would always come back to the tenets of the theme park—that what it was doing was for the greater good of the species.
For most of us, this was our dream job. We were never going to rock the boat. Not about pay. Not about the danger. We loved the whales we worked with. There was also fear: many of us chose not speak out about the conditions at SeaWorld because management might assign us away from the whales, sending us to Sea Lion or Dolphin or even to work at Bird Stadium—which is fine if that’s what you wanted. But working with birds was not my dream job—nor that of many of my colleagues at Shamu. There was an even worse scenario: we might lose the dream job entirely. In public, we remained believers; in private, we discussed our misgivings.
I adore the whales of SeaWorld. I have learned, however, to give voice to my doubts—because they are more than doubts. At the height of my career in San Diego and San Antonio, I knew how fragile the whales were and how much care had to be taken to make sure they were healthy. But as the years passed at the marine park, it became evident that the whales were not happy or well-adjusted, much less thriving.
The fact that we monitored their behavior so carefully for aggression meant that something must be wrong with the conditions of their confinement. If the whales out in nature were harmless to human beings, why then did we have to be so wary of their moods in captivity? Why did we have to worry about orca aggressions?
I also came to another realization as I trained the stars of SeaWorld. The whales were motivated to perform in shows for two reasons: it gave them more opportunities to be rewarded with food and it provided them with a temporary escape from their horrifically sterile lives in captivity. They were bored.
They wanted to perform because there was nothing else for them to do. They were prisoners in the park, relegated after the shows to their cramped tanks—some only eight feet deep—clanging against the gates out of frustration. I tried to alleviate this by making their learning sessions as exciting and different as possible, trying to buoy the spirits of these magnificent beings so that they could perform the magic that enthralled SeaWorld’s millions of visitors.
That was the goal of every interaction the trainers had with the whales—to try and make the session as varied and different as possible to give the orcas a momentary respite. And yet, we all knew that no matter how hard we tried, no matter how creative we were in a session, as soon as it ended, the whales would go right back to their shell of an existence, floating motionless in the pools, dealing with the monotony of captive life, bored out of their minds. The magic of SeaWorld was always grounded in this hard reality.
5
Elegy of the Killer Whale
The biblical Leviathan is often imagined as a whale, the most enormous creature in God’s creation, so immense that scripture scoffs at humans thinking they might somehow overcome him. “Will he make supplications unto thee? Will he speak soft words unto thee? Will he make a covenant with thee? Will thou take him as a servant for ever?” However, SeaWorld and the marine parks of the world have made Leviathan, as embodied in the orca, their captive—the greatest predator of the ocean has been reduced to a poor and desperate prisoner.
Visitors to SeaWorld’s Dine with Shamu restaurant in California and Florida get to see the whales underwater by way of windows cut into the pool (there is no such cutaway pool in Texas). It allows nontrainers to come within inches of the magnificent orcas, separated from them only by see-through panels. Through the partitions of the close-up pool, the whales seem to be as curious about the humans as the humans about the orcas. But the humans may also get close to some curious, if not bizarre, behavior by the whales themselves. For example, there is the matter of eating paint.
The whales peel the paint off the pool’s inner walls with their teeth. To those who witness the behavior, it looks as if they are nibbling on the wall or the floor of the pool. They are trying to occupy themselves, stimulating their enormous jaws and great intelligences with obsessively meticulous work. One whale in SeaWorld San Antonio, Unna, went at the wall paint with such a frightening vigor that she bloodied and bruised her jaw. She would strip so much paint off the floor of the pool that I had trouble figuring out where I was while performing with the whales underwater, all the familiar geography of the pool having been transformed by Unna’s peeling. Trainers working with whales during Shamu Stadium’s spectacular numbers needed to know with absolute precision where they were in the pool. You had mere seconds to spot one of the three large square drains that help you position yourself beneath the surface and give you a sense of perspective as you steer the whale. You don’t want to triangulate yourself and the whale inaccurately, explode out of the water and catapult yourself into the glass. Spotting the cues could be difficult because of the paint-peeling habits of the whales. Unna, specifically, would pick at the paint almost as if she were trying to paint an image of a drain, replicating its shape and contours. She had a real talent for paint stripping.
Boredom manifests itself in other ways. Whales will rub their faces against the wall or sometimes bang their heads against the sides of the pool. Some orcas even develop eating disorders similar to human bulimia nervosa. Killer whales, longing for stimulation, have learned to regurgitate food just to keep themselves busy. Older whales sometimes even teach younger whales the disgusting practice.
Health problems can also arise from these habits of boredom. When whales regurgitate their food, digestive acid surging the wrong way from the stomach destroys the sensitive lining of the
esophagus. When it reaches the mouth, the reflux damages the enamel of the orca’s teeth, which is already weakened by the friction from the whale’s teeth grinding against the concrete walls.
Almost all the whales in SeaWorld wear down their teeth by obsessively rubbing them on the ledges, floors and stages of the pool. Sometimes, a whale can break off a tooth in the process. But some whales rub and bite and chew at the walls worse than others. Eventually, pinholes form in their teeth. The trainers leave them alone as long as they can. But you can’t ignore them forever. If not addressed, the pinholes may form abscesses that attract bacteria, and the resulting infection could kill the whale.
To treat this problem, the trainers have to, first, manually drill the tooth—which is known as a pulpotomy—then irrigate invasively, flushing the tooth two to three times a day as a preventative measure, as the vets offer directions. The veterinarians, for all their medical knowledge, aren’t trained in how to be safe near the whales, so the trainers have to do all the close-up work, especially the dentistry. We have to condition the whales to let strangers get close to them in order to allow the vets to touch them. That only happens after we have helped immobilize the whale by bringing them into the med pool and raising the mechanical floor so that the orca is artificially beached. Then we jam a 2 x 4 block of wood into the very back of the whale’s throat so it doesn’t bring its jaws down on the veterinarians.
Drilling a tooth that is already causing a killer whale pain is risky and places the trainer in a vulnerable position. Only the most experienced trainers perform pulpotomies—and even then we go it slow. Imagine a child on his or her first trip to the dentist. Then imagine that kid is an orca. The whale doesn’t know why the procedure is happening, just that the experience is painful.
Beneath the Surface: Killer Whales, SeaWorld, and the Truth Beyond Blackfish Page 8
