by David Kirby
TO CARLOS
and
THE WHALES
Acknowledgments
It is difficult to write about someone’s life, and it is difficult to have one’s life written about. I am exceedingly grateful to Naomi Rose of the Humane Society of the United States and to the four former trainers from SeaWorld for sharing their stories with me. Naomi gave her time, knowledge, documents, and sense of humor, and her husband, Chris Parsons, was nothing but kind and supportive. Jeff Ventre also was generous of time and effort, despite his hectic MD’s schedule, and his girlfriend, Chica, was hospitable and filled with helpful observations. John Jett, Carol Ray, and Sam Berg were steadfast in their dedication to this project and tremendously helpful in pulling it all together. Carol’s husband, Eric Peterson, and Sam’s husband, Kevin Meddleton, were also wonderfully supportive.
Special thanks are heartily offered to journalist Tim Zimmermann, and also to Colleen Gorman and John Kielty at The Orca Project; to Kim Ventre and Marty Neese; and in the Salish Sea area, to Howard Garrett and Susan Berta of the Orca Network; Kenneth Balcomb of the Center for Whale Research; Candace Calloway Whiting, blogger for the Seattle Post Intelligencer; Suzanne Chisholm and Michael Parfit, producers of The Whale; Dave Duffus of the University of Victoria; NMFS researcher Dr. John Durban; and naturalist and boat captain Spencer Damico. Up in the Johnstone Strait/Telegraph Cove area, I offer deepest thanks to Dan and Sandra Kirby of Hidden Cove Lodge, Bill and Donna MacKay of MacKay Whale Watching, Jim and Mary Borrowman of Orcella Expeditions, and Paul Spong and Helena Symonds of OrcaLab.
In California, Wendy Cooke, ably assisted by Vicky Bailey, was essential in helping me track and fact-check the births, transfers, and deaths of various captive orcas. Many fond thanks also go to Lori Marino, Michael Mountain, Courtney Vail, Jared Goodman, Astrid van Ginneken, Ingrid Visser, Suzanne Allee, Nancy Yates, Susan Millward, Bill Rossiter, Mark Berman, and Tim Ragen and Mike Gosliner of the Marine Mammal Commission.
Other members of the Superpod who kept me updated daily on all things killer whales were Pedro Bicchieri, Todd Bricker, Margaux Dodds of Marine Connection UK, Jeff Friedman, Trina Gadsen, Dean Gomersall of the Pacific Marine Mammal Center, Stefan Jacobs, dolphin activist and author Leah Lemieux, Ric O’Barry, Ester Quintana, Liz Sandeman of Marine Connection UK, Cara Sands, Ella Van Cleave of “Save the Dolphin Smile,” Ann-Marie Van Dijk, Jordan Waltz, Gwen Williams, Steve Wise of the Non-Human Rights Project, and Jon Zern.
Nadine Kallen provided a firsthand account of the death of Keltie Byrne at SeaLand; former SeaWorld trainer Kim Ashdown sent me her recollections of working at SeaWorld Orlando; Michelle Dillard and her attorney Maurice Arcadier provided me statements on allegations of improprieties within SeaWorld; Todd Connell and Suzanne Connell provided eyewitness accounts of the last moments of Dawn Brancheau’s life; and I am grateful to them all. I also thank author Erich Hoyt and filmmakers Gabriela Cowperthwaite and Manny Oteyza for moral and material support. Special thanks also to everyone at HSUS for providing me with workspace, access to documents, and photocopy services while I was in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
Of course, my amazing agent, Todd Shuster of Zachary Shuster Harmsworth, and my longtime and highly loyal editor, George Witte, of St. Martin’s Press, deserve bundles of praise. Special thanks also go to Rachel Ekstrom, Terra Layton, copy editor Steven Boldt, production editor Geraldine Van Dusen, jacket designer Rob Grom, indexer Peter Rooney, and attorney Heather Florence, who has now expertly vetted two of my manuscripts. Nancy Hokkanen provided topflight transcription service, as always, backed up this time by my friend and neighbor Gwen O’Connor, who entered corrections.
I wish to offer extra-special thanks to my dear friend Jay Blotcher, who helped me edit, tighten, and enliven my first draft and is one of the most talented freelance editors that I have had the pleasure to know.
I first began the arduous journey of writing this book at the vacation home of my dear friends Sasha Silverstein and Len Heisler, and on the night I completed the manuscript, I celebrated with them at a delightful Indian restaurant in Brooklyn. I thank them both for their good humor and endless support.
Finally, special thanks to other friends who were especially supportive, including Shimon Attie, Jane Bayer, Scott and Laura Bono, Emily and Chris Collins, David France, Doug Fredman, Steve Goodman, Maria Angelina Jimeno, Bob Lenartz and Patty Glynn Lenartz, David and Margaret Leveson, Lou Pansulla, Laura Perry, Thomas Piel, John Ramos, Gabriel Rotello, Matthew Singer, and Abby Cassell. And of course, thanks always to those closest to me, who helped me the most: my mother and father, Barbara and Leo Kirby, plus Nancy, Michael, and Jenifer Bue, Carlos Arturo Jimeno Gallad, and though it may be frowned upon in certain circles, I offer thanks to my Irish terrier, Wilson, because he was most patient of all with me during this challenging endeavor.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
Introduction
Prologue
PART ONE: BLACKFISH
1. Marine Biologist
2. Trainer
3. Capture
4. Santa Cruz
5. Johnstone Strait
6. Hotdogging
7. Residents vs. Transients
8. OrcaLab
9. Happy Talk
10. Mama’s Boys
11. Breakfast at SeaWorld
12. Whale for Sale
13. Dissertation
PART TWO: DARK SIDE
14. Arrival
15. Humane Society
16. Backstage Doubts
17. Blood in the Water
18. The Case Against
19. Free Willy
20. Protection
21. Kiss of Death
22. Catch and Release
23. Tilly’s Willy
24. Better Days
25. The Salish Sea
26. The Strange Case of Daniel Dukes
27. Transatlantic Ties
28. Abnormal Activities
29. Ken and Kasatka
30. Tenerife
31. Death at SeaWorld
PART THREE: AFTER DAWN
32. Wake
33. Battle Stations
34. Oversight
35. Citation
36. Superpod
Epilogue
Notes
Index
Also by David Kirby
Praise for the Author
About the Author
Copyright
Author’s Note
Several attempts were made to reach out to display industry representatives and other experts who support killer whale captivity, including phone calls, e-mails, and queries posted on venues such as the online marine mammal list MARMAM. Few industry defenders were willing to speak on the record. SeaWorld turned down interview and fact-checking requests, citing the title of this book as well as Huffington Post commentaries and media appearances that I had done. I have tried to include pro-industry statements on a variety of controversies—when they were available in the public record. Former SeaWorld employees Mark Simmons, Thad Lacinak, and Don Goldsberry also declined interview requests, as did the family and friends of Dawn Brancheau. I have endeavored to treat her life and memory respectfully.
On another note, it is of course impossible to re-create verbatim the exact dialogue in unrecorded conversations that happened between characters years or decades ago. In some cases, what is written reflects the recollection of those present at the time.
Finally, the s
pelling of SeaWorld has changed over the years (it was once spelled Sea World); I have adopted the contemporary spelling throughout this book, for the sake of consistency. Likewise, though there are various spellings, I have chosen to use Tilikum and his nickname Tilly.
Introduction
There is something about killer whales.
Maybe it’s their sheer size, some as big as school buses. It might be their force and power, their awesome ability to rocket into the air, or travel a hundred miles a day. It could be their masterful design, their hydrodynamic submarine-like forms, or those elegant black-and-white patterns, as if outfitted in tuxedos made of wet suits. Perhaps it’s the fearsome name and ruthless, predatory reputation. Or maybe it’s the whales’ almost otherworldly intelligence, their sense of humor and play, their apparent love of sharing.
For many people, it is all of the above. They are, quite simply, mesmerized by Orcinus orca.
“Killer whales are the most amazing animals that currently live on this planet,” wrote Robert Pitman, a leading US government marine ecologist not given to hyperbole, in the spring 2011 Journal of the American Cetacean Society. “They are probably the most universally recognizable animals that live in the sea, or perhaps anywhere on the planet. Add to that, they are predators nonpareil—the largest top carnivores on the earth today with killing power that probably hasn’t been rivaled since dinosaurs quit the earth 65 million years ago.”1
It’s little wonder that orcas are popular, drawing millions of fans to marine-based theme parks each year, and a growing number of people to British Columbia, Washington State, Norway, New Zealand, and other places to see these majestic animals thrive in their natural habitat—the boundless ocean.
Few people realize that killer whales are members of the family Delphinidae, making them the planet’s largest dolphins, giant cousins to the far more common white-sided, spotted, bottlenose (think TV’s Flipper), and twenty-eight other species of seagoing dolphins. Orcas not only have the largest brain of any dolphin, at twelve pounds it is four times larger than the human brain (a great white shark’s brain weighs 1.2 ounces). They are among the smartest animals in the world.
Killer whales have been prowling the earth’s oceans for millions of years, and their large and complex brains have apparently continued to evolve over much of that time. They are the ocean’s top predator and one of the most widely distributed animals on earth after humans. Unlike us, they fear nothing in the natural world.
Orcas have captivated the human imagination for millennia, and the first written reference to them dates back to AD 70 by Rome’s Pliny the Elder, who thought them to be loathsome, “pig-eyed” assassins. Killer whales also figure prominently in indigenous people’s myths and legends, including those of many Native American tribes of the Pacific Northwest, who revere the whales in their history, religion, and art. They call the orcas “blackfish,” and the animal is a common motif in totems and other Native sculpture and drawings.
The Haida and Nootka tribes of British Columbia created legends about orcas living under the sea in homes and towns, taking human form beneath the waves. People who drown go to join them there. In much of the region’s mythology, killer whales are believed to embody the souls of chiefs who have passed away. The Tulalip Tribes of Washington State have sagas about blackfish helping Tulalip people during famines, and they selected the orca as their tribal logo.
Scientifically, the animal is known by its genus Orcinus—from the Latin “kingdom of the dead,” or belonging to Orcus, Roman god of the underworld—and its species orca, from the Latin and Greek for large whale or fish. Killer whale evolved from the term given to orcas by eighteenth-century sailors—whale killer—because some types of orcas feed upon other whales and dolphins. It is difficult to find a satisfactory explanation for why whale killer got reversed into killer whale.
In today’s vernacular, the names orca and killer whale are interchangeable, though many in the media and animal activists seem to prefer the former, while scientists and the display industry tend to use the latter. Indeed, SeaWorld has chided reporters in the past for using the term orca, rightly pointing out that we do not call any other animal by its Latin species name alone. A human is sometimes referred to as Homo sapiens (our genus and species), but never just as “sapiens.” SeaWorld’s protestations aside, the word orca appears in dictionaries and stylebooks throughout the English-speaking world, where the species has also been known as grampus, sea wolf, and of course blackfish at various times.
The term orca began gaining popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, when people started realizing how intelligent the creatures are and how gentle they can be. Before orcas were first held captive, they were widely regarded as bloodthirsty monsters and brutal, shark-like killing machines.
“In whatever quarter of the world [killer whales] are found, they seem always intent upon seeking something to destroy or devour,” wrote nineteenth-century whaler Charles Scammon. Swimmers feared them, fishermen hated them, many people fired weapons at them. Nearly one-quarter of all orcas captured for display during the late sixties and early seventies showed signs of bullet wounds. Royal Canadian fighter pilots used to bomb orcas during practice runs, and in 1960, private fishing lodges on Vancouver Island persuaded the Canadian government to install a machine gun at Campbell River to cull the orca population. In the end, it was never fired. Even as recently as 1973, US Navy diving manuals warned that these “extremely ferocious” predators “will attack human beings at every opportunity.”
In the second half of the twentieth century, killer whales were targeted by the commercial whaling industry, which was running out of larger species to pursue. Between 1954 and 1997, Japanese whalers captured and slaughtered 1,178 orcas, while the Norwegians took 987. The former Soviet Union was responsible for taking more than 3,000 killer whales, many of them from antarctic waters.
Despite their name, teeth, and reputation, killer whales in nature are generally mild-mannered with people and with each other, aside from the occasional spat. Not until the captive marine mammal industry began to display orcas did we improve our understanding of their nature. The public display industry should be credited for changing our attitude toward killer whales from contempt to admiration and even affection.
There is little evidence of wild killer whales attacking people. An early expedition to Antarctica reported that orcas had unsuccessfully attempted to flip over an ice floe bearing a terrified group of men and their dog team, though the whales may have thought the barking dogs were some strange species of seal.
Decades later, in 1972, an orca bit down on the leg of a surfer in Big Sur, California. The animal probably confused the surfer’s black wet suit for seal skin, until it got a taste and let go. Nonetheless, the victim required a hundred stitches. It was the only human injury ever recorded. In 2005, a twelve-year-old boy was bumped in the shoulder by a Transient orca while swimming in shallow water in Helm Bay, Alaska, home to many harbor seals. The whale presumably mistook the boy, who left the water uninjured, for prey. So wild killer whales rarely, if ever, cause deliberate harm to humans. Captive killer whales, however, are another animal altogether.
Killer whales are part of a large order of marine mammals known as cetaceans (seh-TAY-shuns) from the Greek word for whale, kētos. All cetaceans—which comprise whales, dolphins, and porpoises—have forelimbs modified into “flippers” (pectoral fins), a “tail” (fluke) that has been flattened horizontally, as opposed to the vertically arranged tails of fish, and one or two nostrils on the top of the head (blowhole), which provide the only air passage to the lungs. Cetaceans cannot breathe through their mouth.
There are three suborders of cetaceans: the Mysticeti, or baleen whales (blue, humpback, gray, etc.), which trap krill, other zooplankton, and small schooling fish in the long strands of brushlike baleen material that line their mouths; the Odontoceti, Latin for “toothed whales,” which includes dolphins, porpoises, belugas, and others; and the Archaeoceti, or ancient w
hales, which are extinct.
Among the toothed whales, the largest is the sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus), the leviathan immortalized in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. The male of the species can grow up to sixty feet in length and weigh ninety thousand pounds (females are much smaller). One-third of his body is taken up by his head and its seventeen-pound brain, the largest on earth.
Other toothed whales include beaked whales, beluga whales, narwhals, and six species of porpoises. Many people think that porpoises and dolphins are the same animals, but they are not even in the same family. Porpoises tend to be shorter and stouter, with rounded rather than beaked or bottlenose rostrums. They are actually more closely related to belugas than dolphins.
The largest family of toothed whales, the Delphinidae, or oceanic dolphins, has some thirty-six species, including such popular theme park draws as the bottlenose dolphin, Pacific white-sided dolphin, short-finned pilot whale, false killer whale, and of course the killer whale, the second-largest toothed whale after the sperm whale.
The terminology gets a bit confused here. The word whale is an English common term, not a scientific one. It basically means “large cetacean.” So even though killer whales, false killer whales, and pilot whales are all in the dolphin family, they are also relatively large cetaceans, and therefore called whales. And while the smaller dolphins (as well as porpoises) are cetaceans, they aren’t large enough to generally be called whales.
The distinct black-and-white pattern of a killer whale helps camouflage the animal from prey swimming underwater, or perched above the sea on ice floes, beaches, and shoals. Like a military plane, the orca’s white belly makes it harder to spot from below, and its dark dorsal side makes it more difficult to discern from above.
Orcas communicate through a complex and poorly understood system of vocalizations that are divided into two main types. They are, according to the Vancouver Aquarium web page:
Whistles: Killer whale whistles are used for communication and sound a lot like human whistles. They are continuous sounds and are referred to as pure tones. Their function isn’t entirely known, but they seem to play a role in communicating the emotional state and location of individuals—as they do in humans.