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

by John Hargrove

  They began to try to discredit the film—and every former trainer who spoke out against SeaWorld in the documentary. One way was to try to find fault with my years of experience. Furious that I had chosen to speak out, they insinuated internally that I was not rehired at SeaWorld San Diego after my stint in France because of what they mysteriously described as a “character flaw,” that I was never loyal to the company. If so, what does it say about their corporate standards that I was rehired at SeaWorld San Antonio? And then promoted again and again after that? SeaWorld also said that I was enamored of the spotlight and must be reveling in the glow of popular attention and the glamor of the red carpet.

  They couldn’t belittle my accomplishments. I was their creation. I had accumulated 14 years of experience at two different SeaWorld facilities. The most substantial criticism SeaWorld could lodge against me was that I was often two to five minutes late for work—and that I was difficult. They are right about that last part. I argued with them about everything: putting those huge whales in eight-foot-deep pools for entertainment reasons; the forcible insemination of the great dominant females of the parks; the stripping away of calves from their mothers. Yes, I was difficult to work with because, through the years, I increasingly voiced my opinions about those practices out of loyalty to the whales. I’m happy if they think that was a character flaw.

  But SeaWorld also made life difficult for the people I loved. When I made the decision to speak out for the first time, I knew I was going to lose a lot of friends—or people I thought were friends. I accepted and understood that former coworkers who still admired SeaWorld and colleagues still in the industry would have to keep their distance from me. I knew that folks who were truly close to me and who truly loved me would continue to take my side. I’m not saying relations weren’t strained at times, but the people who were truly my friends managed to stay in my life and I remained in theirs.

  My friends who were still at the company told me that they were being watched closely; some said they were even warned by senior management to “be careful.” Out of caution, some of them “unfriended” me from their Facebook accounts. They told me that their bosses were going through the friends lists on that website to check for my presence. I remember Wendy calling me in tears, apologizing for removing my name from Facebook. I wasn’t upset. I said, “You need to protect yourself. I want you to protect yourself.”

  That was a stunning change. During our 20-year friendship, Wendy and I spoke about everything—the whales, SeaWorld, gossip, our lives. Now we couldn’t. It was all silence. As we realized that was ending, as we finished that phone call, she told me, “Just don’t forget all the good times. Don’t forget about all the double waterwork we used to do together with Kasatka and Orkid and Takara. Don’t forget those days.”

  I can’t expect friends who are still trainers at SeaWorld to just walk out on their jobs. They have families to support. All I can say is that I love them and that I hope they fight for the whales from within the organization and they stay safe.

  A typical example of the way SeaWorld went after me involved the incident where I lacerated my face after performing with Corky. The injuries from that accident were shown in Blackfish. SeaWorld went into overdrive to try and discredit my account of what happened. While my version has never changed, the company has now provided the press with four completely different sets of details. First, SeaWorld said that absolutely no whale was involved and that I simply dove on my own into the shallow area of the pool in the slide-over. A former Florida trainer, who doesn’t even know me and has never worked with me, said, “No whale was involved and he walked into the screen.” I never at any time walked into a screen and even SeaWorld discredited his statements, admitting that was not the way I was injured. For its second version, SeaWorld conceded I was indeed performing with a whale in the water then contradicted itself, saying I wasn’t and that somehow I slid myself across the stage. Then, they had Wendy record a video segment on their “Truth about Blackfish” page where she said that absolutely no whale was involved and that “he simply ran and dove into the concrete.” SeaWorld posted that video the day after my testimony before the California State Assembly. Now, SeaWorld’s fourth account is that I was performing in the water with a whale but did the maneuver incorrectly leading to my injury. It is consistent with their culture of blaming the trainer for incidents in the pool.

  I have medical records as well as the testimony of former Shamu Stadium supervisors, senior trainers and camera operators—not to the mention the 6,000 people in the stadium that day.

  My relationship with Wendy has changed radically. Now, our phone conversations are rare and filled with silence. She is a senior manager and her role is to protect the company. Our friendship will never be the same.

  One of the people I loved and respected most is a former SeaWorld trainer who I worked with during my apprentice days in San Antonio. She has asked not to be named in this book. But I learned a lot from her. She and her beautiful family were devout Christians who were taught that homosexuality is wrong. But she and I were such good friends that she was one of the few people at SeaWorld San Antonio who knew I was gay. She never treated me differently. It never changed how she and her husband felt about me. I was incredibly moved by that. This was the South in the 1990s. I was still recovering from what Mark McHugh said about almost not hiring me.

  Eventually, I left for California, and she gave up her career to focus on her family. She remained a supporter of the company, however, believing that it continued to have the best interests of the animals as a corporate priority. At the very least, she knew that the trainers loved the whales. She was always a strong advocate for the orcas and the rest of SeaWorld’s menagerie. She fought with management over issues ranging from the sea lions going blind because of chlorine and ozone levels in the water to whether orca calves were being properly nursed.

  One night, not too long after Blackfish was released, she and I had a lengthy argument. She felt I was not giving enough credit to SeaWorld for the good it was doing; she also said that people she described as “radical animal rights activists” were having too much of an influence over me. She kept returning to the fact that the trainers had been doing the right things for the animals over the years. I kept trying to get her to understand that this fight has never been about the trainers, that Blackfish never says the trainers were villains.

  I asked her if she thought it was ethical for SeaWorld to profit from its Shamu spectaculars. “Yes,” she said, “because God gave us dominion over all the animals.”

  I am not a theologian, but I worked myself back into our debate by asking her a question. “When you come to SeaWorld with your kids and take them to the top of Shamu Stadium after the show, where you can look out at those pools and see the size of the facilities for the whales, when you see most of them floating stationary at the surface of the water, in your heart do you truly think that is good enough for these animals, with everything we know about them and their needs?”

  She said, “No.”

  At the end of May 2012, after I went on medical leave, SeaWorld received a decision on its appeal against the OSHA rulings imposed on the corporation in the aftermath of Dawn’s death. OSHA declared that SeaWorld had placed higher priority on its financial interests than on the safety of its employees. Administrative law judge Ken Welsch upheld OSHA’s citations and fines. The money is miniscule in light of the $2.5 billion SeaWorld is worth: $75,000 total. But the defeat stung because the judge backed OSHA’s contention that SeaWorld was ultimately responsible for putting Dawn in harm’s way. SeaWorld took the case to the US Court of Appeals. On April 14, 2014, that court also upheld OSHA’s charges after the US Department of Labor’s independent occupational safety and health commission refused to hear SeaWorld’s appeal.

  The judges in both courts were scathing toward SeaWorld. With his administrative law decision, Judge Welsch said that
SeaWorld was bending over backwards not to describe Tilikum’s behavior with Dawn as “aggressive.” In a detailed decision, he declared, “If Tilikum’s killing of Dawn Brancheau was not an aggressive act, perhaps classification of the killer whale’s behavior is irrelevant. Whatever the motivation ascribed to a killer whale, any unpredictable behavior has the potential of causing death or serious injury to a trainer working in close contact with the whales.” SeaWorld’s legalistic attempt to mischaracterize the incident had come to naught.

  Welsch went on to deride several other SeaWorld practices as inadequately protecting the safety of trainers. “Trainers are expected to decipher precursors and then choose the appropriate response with split-second timing, keeping in mind that they are performing in front of an audience.” He clearly saw who the loser was in SeaWorld’s corporate blame game. “If the animal engages in undesirable behavior, it will be attributed to mistakes the trainer made.” The judge also highlighted SeaWorld’s priority: to minimize the audience’s perception that something has gone wrong by having the show continue. He cited a memo by Mike Scarpuzzi after the 1999 incident between Kasatka and Petey. Scarp was angry that the show had been canceled. “The show did not need to be cut short,” he wrote. “This brought unnecessary attention to the incorrect behavior and placed the control of the show to the whale. We have reiterated our existing policy to utilize any and all resources before canceling a show.”

  The judge was derisive. “SeaWorld insists it did not recognize the hazard posed by working in close contact with killer whales. The court finds this implausible and no reasonable person would conclude that . . . Whether the trainers were fully immersed and swimming with the killer whales for a waterwork show performance, or standing poolside or on a slide-out for a dry work show performance, SeaWorld knew its trainers were at risk for being struck or drowned by a killer whale.”

  The Court of Appeals was briefer in its judgment than Welsch but no less definitive in its view of SeaWorld. Concluding that OSHA did not overstep its authority in its dealings with the company, Judge Judith Rogers wrote for the court, “Statements by SeaWorld managers do not indicate that SeaWorld’s safety protocols and training made the killer whales safe; rather, they demonstrate SeaWorld’s recognition that the killer whales interacting with trainers are dangerous.” SeaWorld, she wrote, “acted irresponsibly” and “violated its duties as an employer.”

  The corporation then had to deal with the impact of Blackfish. The documentary received great reviews. The New York Times said its account of Tilikum and his plight in captivity in SeaWorld was “delicately lacerating.” The website Rotten Tomatoes gave the film an amazing 98 percent approval rating. The Washington Post called the film’s portrayal of the treatment of orcas in marine parks “damning.” When Blackfish was presented on cable TV, it became CNN’s most watched show for all of 2013—with its biggest share in history of the valuable audience demographic of 18- to 23-year-olds. The film was nominated for best documentary at BAFTA, the British equivalent of the Oscars. It was among several shortlisted for an Academy Award.

  Blackfish has had broad social and economic consequences. Ordinary folks got into the act. A petition drive on change.org was instrumental in ending a Taco Bell promotion that provided customers with discounted tickets to SeaWorld. The fast food chain also said it was ending its relationship with the marine park. Another change.org drive appears to have convinced Southwest Airlines to end a 26-year cross-promotional program with SeaWorld. Several musicians called off their appearances at the company’s parks as a result of seeing Blackfish, including Martina McBride, Barenaked Ladies, 38 Special, REO Speedwagon, Cheap Trick, Trisha Yearwood, Heart, Willie Nelson, Trace Adkins and The Beach Boys.

  The public statements and tweets by celebrities have not only been heartening for all of us who worked on Blackfish but have truly helped propel the movement for change. Ann Wilson of Heart said, “I’ve seen photos of people getting splashed [by orcas] and it looks like fun but when you look underneath you see the dark side. What they do is slavery, plain and simple.” Cher said that SeaWorld was a “heinous corporation” and that its executives were focused on the bottom line and not on the welfare of the animals. Willie Nelson said on CNN after he dropped out of appearing at SeaWorld, “I don’t agree with the way that they treat their animals so it wasn’t that hard a deal for me to cancel.” The comedian Russell Brand called SeaWorld “a stain upon humanity posing as entertainment.” And the music impresario Russell Simmons said, “We need to realize that these are beings that suffer the same as we suffer, they want freedom the way we want freedom.”

  Politicians know a popular issue when they see one—and, from state governments to Washington, DC—they have joined the grassroots call for change. In April 2014 in California, home of the crown jewel in SeaWorld’s empire, Assemblyman Richard Bloom, a Democrat, proposed bill AB2140, “The Orca Welfare and Safety Act,” a piece of legislation that would essentially end the way the corporation is currently run. If passed, it would become “unlawful to hold in captivity, or use, a wild-caught or captive-bred orca . . . for performance or entertainment purposes, . . . to capture in state waters, or import from another state, any orca intended to be used for performance or entertainment purposes, to breed or impregnate an orca in captivity, or to export, collect, or import from another state the semen, other gametes, or embryos of an orca held in captivity for the purpose of artificial insemination, except as provided.”

  In February 2014 in New York, which has no parks with orcas, State Senator Greg Ball, a Republican, proposed a complete ban on captive killer whales within the borders of the Empire State. It passed unanimously in the Senate. While symbolic, Ball’s legislation is proof that the sentiment generated by Blackfish is nationwide, affecting Americans who may never even have been to a marine park. I was asked to support Senator Ball and it was my honor to speak to other New York senators in Albany about my experience.

  Along with experts like Dr. Rose and Dr. Giles, I co-sponsored and testified in California in support of Assemblyman Bloom’s bill. It was infuriating to hear SeaWorld continue to refuse to acknowledge that it separates calves from their mothers. As I wrote earlier in this book, there is no question that calves are taken from their mothers—and that females are impregnated again and again, from an unnaturally young age.

  Many of us who worked on Blackfish were astonished when the news broke in June 2014 that two California representatives in the US Congress had proposed updating federal rules on the welfare of captive killer whales, particularly the size of the pools and other living conditions. Furthermore, 40 members of Congress put their names to the letter the Californians authored criticizing the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for not updating its rules for captive marine mammals in 20 years. None of us knew it was coming, and we were ecstatic. It passed unanimously.

  SeaWorld, meanwhile, questioned the congressional proposal to set aside $1 million to study the issue. It said peer-reviewed scientific papers already existed on the subject. The company likes to pretend it is a scientific organization for the purposes of public relations. But it gets little respect from scientists. The eminent New Zealand orca scientist Dr. Ingrid Visser has repeatedly asked SeaWorld to stop misquoting one of her studies every time it tries to argue that dorsal fin collapse occurs commonly in nature. The company says that 23 percent of the whales she observed had collapsed dorsals. She said the figure refers to a category that includes collapsed dorsals but was mostly made up of disfigured or crooked fins. She saw only one collapsed dorsal in the wild. The proper statistic would have been 0.1 percent.

  As Blackfish began having a broad public impact with its January 2013 premiere at Sundance, SeaWorld refused to acknowledge that the film was having any kind of effect at all. Perhaps that was because a little financial engineering was going on. SeaWorld was preparing for an initial public offering of stock just three months later. It was important that
SeaWorld Entertainment Inc., as the new public company was to be called, look financially sound and able to stand down any criticism in order to have a successful IPO.

  SeaWorld has been through various groups of owners. The founders in San Diego sold the company to the publisher Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (HBJ) in 1976. HBJ in turn sold the parks in 1988—by then including Orlando and San Antonio—to Busch Entertainment Corporation, a division of Anheuser-Busch. In 2009, Busch sold SeaWorld and Busch Gardens to the Blackstone group for $2.3 billion—and Blackstone, a prominent investment bank, was preparing to harvest some profits by taking SeaWorld public. The IPO was apparently successful, with the original $27 share price jumping to close to $40 in a month. Blackstone took about half a billion dollars in profits with sales of stock after the IPO, according to Ryan Dezember and Michael Wursthorn in the Wall Street Journal. The Journal said other beneficiaries of the IPO were likely to be the Florida State Board Administration, the Texas Teachers Retirement Fund and the California State Teachers Retirement System, which had invested in the original SeaWorld purchase. It is a curious financial ecology that profits from and feeds off SeaWorld and its orcas.

  Despite SeaWorld’s solid numbers, the public pressure that originated with Blackfish was tenacious and longer-lived than the new public company’s financial health. By August 13, 2014, SeaWorld still refused to admit that the film had had a detrimental effect on its business. It did concede, however, that the Bloom proposal in California—which just happened to have been inspired by the documentary—had dented attendance. In a quarterly statement required of publicly traded firms by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), SeaWorld said it expected revenue to decline 6 or 7 percent in 2014. The company had earlier predicted an increase. As a result of that revelation, SeaWorld stock plummeted more than 33 percent to less than $19 at the end of that day.