Tilikum is the name of the bull orca that just killed its trainer in San Diego.
As a commenter on the Stoke Report said, “I guess I’d be a little more shocked if that had happened with, say, a “snuggler whale”.
I’m going to quote a lot of other documents, below. The emphasis is mine in all cases.
This was not the first time. His entry in Wikipedia’s page of captive orca is a little horrifying:
Just a few months prior to the birth of Kyuquot, Tilikum was involved in an incident which resulted in the death of a trainer. Twenty-year-old Keltie Byrne, who worked at the park, slipped and fell into the tank with the whales. Tillikum, a pregnant Haida II, and Nootka IV grabbed her in their mouths and tossed her to each other, presumably playing. Keltie drowned.
…
Tilikum was at the scene of another death on July 6, 1999, though evidence suggests the Orca may not have been at fault. A 27-year-old man was found floating naked in Tilikum’s pool, apparently killed by a combination of hypothermia and drowning. He had visited SeaWorld the previous day, stayed after the park closed, and evaded security to enter the Orca tank.[34] Investigators determined that the man, either before or after death, had been bitten by Tillikum.
Tilikum never takes part in water work with trainers, not necessarily due to aggression, but because he doesn’t necessarily realize his own strength. [citation needed]
On February 24th, 2010 Tilikum was involved in a third incident, when a 40-year-old experienced trainer was killed. The trainer drowned following a popular Dine with Shamu show as at least two dozen tourists looked on from above a whale tank and from an underwater viewing area. SeaWorld executive Chuck Tompkins confirmed what witnesses saw, that the trainer was pulled into the water by Tilikum.
OK, so clearly, he’s got a history. But let’s look at it from his side:
Tilikum, sometimes misspelled Tillikum, is a bull Orca who lives at SeaWorld Orlando. He was captured near Iceland in November 1983 at about two years of age. Tillikum measures 22 feet 6 inches long and weighs in at 12,300 pounds (as of 2007). His pectoral fins are six and one half feet long, his massive flukes curl under, and his 6-foot-tall dorsal fin is flopped completely to his left side, and weighs close to 200 pounds. He is the largest Orca in captivity.
And in our towering arrogance, we have this mighty creature in a tiny, little, void of biota, pool. He’s been in prison his entire life.
The article on Discovery had some good stuff to say:
Brancheau’s death is the second in just a couple of months. Alexis Mertinez, a trainer at Loro Parque in Tenerife died in late December after having his chest severely compressed by a different whale “not considered completely predictable” who was known to “play rough.”
The list goes on, tallying up near two dozen attacks — most non-fatal — since the 1970’s. Together with today’s sad, unpredictable incident, such tragedies raise a few important questions about training and keeping killer whales in captivity.
But perhaps because of their status in our culture, we forget that they are multi-ton apex predators. In the wild they ruthlessly hunt down and eat seals, sea lions, and just about anything else they want.
More broadly, what provokes an attack like this, and why do they keep happening?
“Whether you call it boredom, aggression, stir-crazy, or it just being a wild animal, these accidents occur, and shouldn’t be taken for granted,” Courtney Vail of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) told Discovery News (a call made to SeaWorld was not immediately returned). She went on to suggest that it’s the venue in which we view these animals — a brightly lit SeaWorld tank, with music, applause, and sensational tricks — that makes us think these animals are happy go-lucky animals content with life in captivity.
We can’t see into the mind of an animal, of course. But according to Vail, 136 Orcas have been taken into captivity from the wild since 1961. Of those, 123 have died, with an average lifespan of four years once captured. For a species that averages 35 years in the wild, that’s a pretty poor public health record.
The bottom line is that these animals are very lucrative, as are the relationships trainers establish with them for shows. A 2004 investigative report by Sally Kestin of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel revealed that SeaWorld paid $875,000 for an Orca in the mid-1990s. Though WDCS hasn’t been able to find any current numbers, Vail speculated that the whales likely now sell for “millions of dollars.”
Got that? Lucrative. That’s what matters. The amount of money a dolphin for a show is worth is a large part of what drives the dolphin slaughter at Taiji, subject of the groundbreaking film “The Cove“. Dolphins are needed for shows, for an adoring public. And although I know nothing about the Orca capture business, I’m guessing it’s pretty similar, although without the feeding-children-mercury-contaminated-meat part of the show.
On a visceral level, animals in captivity for public entertainment make me want to throw up. I have personal baggage here, and I own it. I still can’t even talk about it without feeling like I completely failed Buck, the otter that I helped train to rehabilitate into the wild, who due to politics and money will now live out his days in a sterile freaking box. The guilt over this still haunts me, and I understand in my guts how Ric O’Barry feels.
Think about it. Tilikum, as a free whale, would travel freely from hemisphere to hemisphere, something that only Orcas do. His home is the entire world ocean. And for the vast majority of life, he’s been confined to a bathtub. For perspective, try walking into just one room of your home, one where it takes you just five steps to get from one side to the other, slam the door hard, and realize that you will never be anywhere larger in your life, nor will you ever have anything resembling privacy, or a choice over how to spend your days. You will eat on schedule, and you will breed, on cue, with whomever your captors shove through the door. And also realize, as you scan floor, walls, ceiling, that Tilikum in the wild would never have seen a wall, ever, and has lived his entire life with them.
Captiveanimals.org says:
Animal welfare groups agree that whales suffer physically and psychologically in captivity. Their small artificial pools with chemically altered water could never replicate the sea. Captive whales are often deprived of the family unit that they would live within in the wild.
These factors have an effect and as a result the life span of orca in captivity is much shorter than that of wild orca. Captive orcas are taught to perform on cue and are forced to endure a life of public scrutiny. Studying whales in this environment teaches nothing about wild orca as their lifestyles are so dramatically controlled and altered by man.
Prisoners in solitary
Jacques Cousteau said:
“There is about as much educational benefit to be gained in studying dolphins in captivity as there would be studying mankind by only observing prisoners held in solitary confinement”.
In the wild, male orca can live to be 50 years old. Females may reach 80 years of age. Beluga whales and dolphins can live 25-30 years. In captivity the lifespan of whales may be severely reduced. Many animals die shortly after capture. Most die from bacterial infections. According to records, over 24 cetaceans have died at Vancouver Aquarium. Bjossa has lost 2 mates and 3 calves.
In the wild, whales and dolphins live in small family groups called pods. Orca offspring stay with their mothers for life. Whales and dolphins are highly intelligent and extremely social animals. In captivity groupings of cetaceans may be unnatural. Unrelated whales and dolphins are forced to live together. The animals have no choice over their companions. At Vancouver Aquarium a baby beluga whale was separated from her mother for 6 months.
In the wild, orca whales may travel up to 100 miles a day, reaching speeds of up to 30 miles an hour. They are able to dive hundreds of feet below the water’s surface. For captive orca this is impossible. They would have to swim in circles for hours, even days to cover the range they would do if in the wild.
A world of sound
Wild orcas live in a world of sound. Each family or pod has their own dialect. They use echolocation to capture their prey. Captive orca only have the sounds of water cooling pumps and filtration systems and these are heard by the whales 24 hours a day. The other sound that they hear is that of the public, who clap and cheer when the orcas perform demeaning tricks. Glass and concrete enclosures have an effect on the sounds made by captive whales and dolphins.
Orcas are designed for a life in the sea. They have evolved to be part of a complex ecosystem of marine life. Captivity is foreign, environments are sterile, water is chemically treated, social grouping is unnatural, and life is artificial. It is no wonder that orca in captivity suffer from injury, illness and premature death.
Cruel statistics
Since 1965, 56 orcas have been captured from the waters around BC and Washington State, including one whole family. 54 are now dead, living on average 5.2 years once captured. The impact on the wild populations is only now being recognised. The entertainment industry has ignored the devastation it has left behind. Since 1961 there have been more than 130 orca captured from the wild for the entertainment industry. Over 75% are now dead. They survived on average less than 6 years.
So in light of that, please explain to me why what Tilikum has done is any kind of surprise at all? And in light of that, please explain to me why we continue to visit these horrors of captivity and pretend that they’re edutainment? What we do to these animals is nothing short of appalling, and needs to be stopped. If you are a parent, please boycott these venues immediately, and let people know why you’re doing it. There’s a link in the left nav of this blog to donate to saving the dolphins at Taiji, and I would ask you all, if you have learned even one thing reading this, to donate a small amount (even a dollar) to that cause. Because if we can stop it with the dolphins, we can work on stopping it with the rest of the marine species, and if we can’t stop it there, there truly is no hope, for us or them.
UPDATE: Sea Shepherd is Safer than Sea World
UPDATE 2: Whales and Dolphins Don’t Like to Be Confined (the Cove’s Louis Psihoyos)
UPDATE 3: Debbie Leahy: Just maybe, worry about the whales?
Tags: activism, barbarism, captive animals, captivity, killer whales, marine parks, orca, Ric O'Barry, Taiji, the cove, Tilikum
