Death at SeaWorld: Shamu and the Dark Side of Killer Whales in Captivity

by David Kirby

  Jeff and his younger sister, Kimberly, were born a year apart in the mid-1960s in a bedrock conservative neighborhood on Cincinnati’s west side. While they were still quite young, their parents decided to relocate to central Florida. The notion of moving away to anywhere—let alone exotic tropical Florida—was a somewhat radical proposition in the traditional neighborhood. But Jerry and Nancy were up for something new.

  In 1968, the family loaded up their Cutlass Supreme and made the nine-hundred-mile journey south. They rented an apartment for a few years in the Orlando suburb of Winter Park as Jeff’s dad began his new job teaching engineering at the new Florida Technological University. The small school was designed to provide high-tech training for prospective employees at the Kennedy Space Center, thirty-five miles to the east. (Today, the school is the sprawling University of Central Florida, the nation’s second largest.)

  A few years later, the Ventres moved into a custom-built dream house outside the town of Oviedo, about twenty miles northeast of Orlando. The modern, L-shaped ranch-style home was on five acres of woods and groves on the shore of Lake Mills, its warm and clear water so pure at the time that it was drinkable. The house was surrounded by the exuberant foliage of central Florida: southern cypress trees rising from the lake, southern red maple and laurel oak growing amid thick Florida saw palmetto and fragrant rows of oranges and tangerines.

  With a rocket scientist for a dad, it’s not surprising that the family spent a good amount of time at the Kennedy Space Center, taking tours and watching rocket launches. The kids grew up loving the moon, stars, and space, and the science needed to get us there. Science was a mainstay in the household as the kids conducted simple experiments or were taught to use slide rules by their father. Jeff also loved watching nature documentaries. Much like the young Naomi, he was hooked on anything featuring the French explorer Jacques Cousteau and his underwater world. Disney World had not yet opened, and the family would drive over to Lake Buena Vista to visit the information center and gaze longingly at an architectural model of the marvels to come. Nearby, a new SeaWorld park was also being built, though Jeff only went there once as a kid.

  When Jeff moved on to Oviedo High School, he won a spot on the baseball team. By his junior year, Jeff found time to run for class president, and he won. He was not only a jock and a politico; he was also a thespian, having played a successful run as Ebenezer Scrooge in the eleventh-grade Drama Club’s production of A Christmas Carol. All his activities were good preparation for his later years on the big stage at Shamu Stadium.

  After school and during the summer, life for Jeff and Kim centered on Lake Mills. They knew every cove, shoal, and sandbar in the water, which they expertly navigated like pilots who bring ships into a harbor. With few other people around, the kids had their run of hundreds of acres—truly free-range children. On horseback, they could go even farther, their unleashed dogs running beside them. After a good long tour, they would bring the animals down to the lake and everyone would take a plunge.

  Dangers lurked in the water and on land, but the kids never felt seriously threatened. They learned to steer clear of the occasional alligator or the more common and venomous coral snakes and water moccasins. Other wildlife roamed around the brushy landscape: armadillos, river otters, white-tailed deer, and Osceola wild turkeys.

  Waterskiing at Lake Mills was practically a religion. Back then, there wasn’t much fancy equipment, so after progressing from two skis to a single slalom, kids had to invent their own “next step.” Some went for barefoot skiing, but the Ventres’ boat lacked the needed horsepower. So Jeff and Kim would grab, say, a paddle and try to ski on that. They would stand barefoot without straps on the paddle, using it like a single ski, handle facing forward, and go.

  Jerry Ventre was often there with them, working with his kids on the fundamentals of sports. It was all about observation, coordination, and timing, he told them. Balance was also key. The two kids were constantly inventing new balancing tricks: Can you ski on a piece of lumber? Can you stand up bareback on a horse while it’s trotting? Can you do it while the horse is swimming, then do a back dive into the lake?

  These were lessons in physical acuity that would also serve Jeff well at SeaWorld.

  In the fall of 1981, Jeff left home for Florida State University in Tallahassee, where he would study biology and eventually become president of the Theta Chi fraternity. After college, Jeff returned to central Florida, certain that he wanted to work in the biological sciences. But he also wanted a job he could actually enjoy. That’s when he started thinking about SeaWorld. Jeff had seen ads of the hotdogger trainers rocket-hopping off the big killer whales, and it sure looked like fun. But how scientific would a job like that be? Jeff assumed that cutting-edge marine research was going on at the park, and he wanted in on the action.

  “I can either try this thing at SeaWorld because it sounds cool, I’m trained in biology, and I’m comfortable around animals,” Jeff told his parents, “or I can look for a job collecting pond scum off of a bayou somewhere.”

  Kim was a little surprised: Working at an amusement park seemed like an odd choice. But she knew that Jeff would enjoy the work, and he was almost uniquely qualified. After thinking about it for a while, Kim agreed it was a good move. “You have a science background, you can ski on a paddle, you like animals, you’ve got great balance, and you can act,” she said to Jeff. “It makes sense.”

  Jeff’s career timing turned out to be fortuitous. SeaWorld was opening its fourth park, in San Antonio, and some of the Orlando staff were being transferred there. That left a few openings in Florida. Jeff read about it in the paper, picked up the phone, and called human resources.

  An animal trainer position at SeaWorld was not easy to get, Jeff quickly learned. Hundreds of people had filled out applications and only a handful of them, at most, would be selected. Jeff was told he needed to get certified in scuba before he would be considered.

  Jeff was exultant when he got called in for an interview, which took place in a nondescript one-story building on the Orlando park’s perimeter. About a dozen applicants were there, young men and women, athletic, good-looking, and eager. They were waiting to meet two of the most important people at SeaWorld Orlando: Shamu Stadium supervisor Chuck Tompkins, and Thad Lacinak, the assistant curator of animal training.

  During his interview, Jeff talked about his biology background and love of animals. Whatever he said must have worked: He got a callback for a swim test at Whale and Dolphin Stadium in Orlando. On the appointed day, Jeff showed up with his bathing trunks, along with another dozen or so applicants, and was told to dive into the seventy-degree water without a wet suit.

  First, he was instructed to swim underwater from the stage to the Plexiglas partition across the main Whale and Dolphin Stadium pool as many times as he could without coming up for air. He was then told to dive to the bottom and retrieve a scuba weight, to swim laps, to carry heavy buckets filled with water around the deck, and then to finish off with push-ups. It was exhausting, but he pulled it off.

  Jeff was completely out of breath when someone handed him a microphone and a script. To work in a show at SeaWorld, you not only had to do stunts, you had to narrate other people’s stunts as well, and you had to do it without panting over the loudspeakers. Jeff was told to read some lines as if the stadium were filled with fans. It was not easy. He drew a deep breath, centered himself as he learned in drama club, and began to read.

  Jeff got the job. He was told to report for work at SeaWorld the week of November 23, 1987. Two days before that, there was an accident at SeaWorld San Diego.

  John Sillick, an orca trainer with less than two years’ experience, had been riding on the back of a female named Nootka. Suddenly, Orky II (whom Naomi had seen at Marineland when she was young) breached sideways from the water and landed with a bone-crushing thud directly on top of Nootka, sandwiching Sillick between their bodies. He left the pool with twelve broken vertebrae, a shattered femur,
and a fractured pelvis.

  Jeff saw coverage of the accident on the news and heard talk of it during his first week of work. He learned all trainers at Shamu Stadium had been ordered out of the water with the orcas, at least for the time being. The general impression was that the underexperienced Sillick was at fault; this was a rare, freak accident. Nevertheless, management imposed a system-wide ban on all water work with killer whales, pending further notice.

  But Jeff had not been hired to work at Shamu Stadium. That would come later. Instead, he was immediately assigned to SeaWorld Theater, a covered stadium that offered shows featuring birds of prey, parrots, dogs, maybe an emu or a miniature bison. The training staff of the show tried to teach the audience how to train their own animals back at home. Jeff worked mostly with dogs and parrots.

  It wasn’t exactly what he had expected, but it was a start. Besides, working with the animals was a lot of fun. It was even somewhat educational. Jeff knew a little bit about training animals thanks to the dogs and horses he grew up with, plus some of the courses he had taken in college had included the concepts of operant conditioning. But he was eager to learn more. One day soon after being hired Jeff was handed an official SeaWorld publication on the fundamentals of animal training. “Here, read this,” a supervisor instructed him. “And then pay very close attention to everything we do here with the animals.” Once Jeff knew the basics, he could start learning various “behaviors” the animals knew, and the command signals needed to get them to complete their tasks properly.

  Many fundamentals of modern animal training are based on the work of B. F. Skinner, the famous (and somewhat controversial) psychologist and behaviorist who pioneered much of the field of behavioral science and became a leading authority on operant conditioning. This is a psychological form of teaching in which the type and frequency of behaviors are modified through associating desired behaviors with a “reinforcer”—usually a reward such as food, praise, stroking, a kiss, or a good grade.

  If behavior could be changed by reinforcing consequences in the environment, then any number or combinations of discrete behaviors could be elicited from an animal. Animals could be trained to perform long sequences strung together, spurred along by intermittent rewards given according to a variable “reinforcement schedule.”

  Getting an animal to do what you want, then, is basically a matter of reinforcing the desired behavior whenever it occurs.

  Jeff remembered watching a few grainy colored films of Dr. Skinner from back in the 1960s, discussing his work with students. In one famous clip, Skinner shows how remarkably quick and simple it is to train a pigeon to turn around counterclockwise. As the famous psychologist narrates, a young female assistant places a white pigeon on a platform painted institutional green. A back panel on the platform has a food slot at the bottom of it, with a bare lightbulb at the top. Behind the panel is an unseen machine that makes mechanical clicks. The pigeon has already been conditioned to look for food that appears in the slot each time the light goes on and the machine clicks.

  “I will try to pick out some particular pattern of behavior and make it a more frequent part of the repertoire of the bird,” Skinner tells his students. “Now, we will just watch its behavior a bit.” At first, the bird just stands there, pecking at a piece of grain that appears in the slot each time the light flashes and the machine clicks. “It’s not doing anything particular, you see, but I am going to try to get it to do something,” Skinner says. “Suppose I shape up the behavior of making a complete turn? What I do to make that turn is to simply wait for some part of that behavior.”

  And that’s what he does. Within seconds the pigeon turns one-quarter of the way around, in the desired counterclockwise direction. The light goes on and the machine clicks and the bird turns back to collect its reward (the positive reinforcement). Now, almost instantly, the bird has learned that if he turns to his left, counterclockwise, he will be rewarded with a flashing light, a clicking noise, and a piece of food. “You can see the effect is instantaneous,” Skinner says as the bird repeats the movement and collects the reward.

  But now the doctor wants more from his pigeon. He is not going to be satisfied with a mere quarter spin, and the bird will not be rewarded for it. “I wait for a more pronounced movement than that,” he says. Almost as if on cue, the bird gives a full 360-degree turn, counterclockwise, and collects his reward. The pigeon has been properly and positively “reinforced”—it has been trained to turn entirely around to the left, all in about sixty seconds.

  Within a few weeks, Jeff became proficient enough with hand signals that he could work parts of the SeaWorld Theater show: commanding dogs to perform retrievals; signaling birds to conduct “perimeter flights” around the enclosed stadium and then return to base; getting talking birds to say witty things from a memorized script.

  It wasn’t all fun all the time. Usually when he showed up for work, at about 7:00 a.m., Jeff had to clean out the cages and the feeding dishes of all the animals in the theater.

  “They sleep in sky kennels at night,” he explained to his sister, Kim. “And of course when you show up in the morning, they all gotta pee, or they’ve already peed, or worse.” Jeff put up with the drudge work cheerfully, though he really wanted to work with marine mammals—especially the killer whales—much more than collies and macaws. On the other hand, nobody was getting in the water with the orcas right now anyway, he thought, because of that trainer who got smashed up in San Diego.

  Jeff had no problem making new friends at SeaWorld Theater, including with some of the animal performers. He quickly bonded with Spunky, a two-year-old, black-and-white boxer-type mutt who performed in the show. Spunky was special, and Jeff recognized it right away.

  Spunky was highly athletic and a bit unpredictable. He’d often chase after expensive parrots and other exotic and pricey flying fowl. And Spunky liked to take off. He would somehow sneak out of the show and split, roaming around the grounds like a VIP guest. Jeff was usually dispatched to track him down.

  Jeff fell in love with Spunky, but SeaWorld’s management were ready to rid themselves of the troublesome pooch. They were terrified he would end up killing one of their $10,000 exotic birds. Spunky was fired and Jeff gladly took him off SeaWorld’s hands.

  Jeff’s mom and dad fell in love with the dog, too. Nancy Ventre quickly went about deprogramming Spunky of all the behaviors that had been drilled into him at SeaWorld, teaching him instead how to live like a non-showbiz canine in the “outside world.”

  In those early days at SeaWorld, Jeff also grew close to two new trainers who had started work at roughly the same time he did—members of the lucky batch of hires who were brought on board to replace those heading off to San Antonio. One was a tall guy with dark hair and a square jaw, Mark Simmons, and the other was Carol Ray, smart, beautiful, and blond. The two of them were assigned to Whale and Dolphin Stadium. Jeff would remain close with both coworkers for many years, even after they all had left SeaWorld.

  Eventually, Jeff, Sam, Mark, and Carol would be rotated into Shamu Stadium. A lot of people wanted to work at Shamu—going there was like being kicked upstairs, getting one’s break in the big time. Working with captive killer whales was different from working with the dolphins, belugas, and false killers. They were many times larger in size and could injure a trainer purely by accident. They were not as quick and sleek as the false killer whales, but they were far more powerful. They had their own opinions about what they wanted to do at any time. They could be obstinate and manipulative. Some of them were fascinated by images on the JumboTron.

  The other big difference about Shamu Stadium was the relatively small animal population. With a higher ratio of trainers to animals and fewer animals to train, most people who worked at Shamu were more performers than actual trainers. Only a handful of senior staff taught the killer whales new tricks; everyone else learned those hand signals to make the animals perform properly. Most people working at Shamu, especially those in the lo
wer ranks, were there to “maintain” behaviors, scrub buckets, and recite show lines.

  The orca population was small, and falling: By August of 1991, there would only be three killer whales at Orlando.

  Chief among the Florida orcas was the undisputed matriarch, Katina. Just two or three years old when captured off the coast of Iceland in October 1978, Katina was separated from her family and pod.1 Usually a young female will stay by her mother’s side for many years, even after she’s had her first calf, typically at about age fifteen. Only later, after establishing her own matriline, does she start spending more time away from her mother.2

  SeaWorld had no intention of letting Katina reach fifteen before having her first calf. In March of 1984, when she was about nine and living at SeaWorld California, she was impregnated by a large whale named Winston, a Southern Resident orca rounded up in a notorious mass capture at Penn Cove, Washington, in 1970.3 Winston had spent six years at a UK amusement park before SeaWorld California acquired him in October 1976.4

  In late 1984, a pregnant Katina was flown to her new home in Orlando. There, on September 26, 1985, she gave birth to Winston’s daughter, Kalina, the world’s first orca successfully bred in captivity.5 She became a media sensation and was dubbed Baby Shamu. Millions flocked to Orlando to see the highly promoted, first-of-its-kind newborn orca behind glass. Baby Shamu’s father, Winston, would die seven months later in San Diego from chronic cardiovascular failure, at about nineteen years of age.6 (The average life expectancy for a wild male orca is approximately thirty years, with an estimated maximum life span of about sixty.)7

  The world fell in love with Kalina. SeaWorld jumped at the opportunity her arrival presented by launching a Baby Shamu Celebration tour. In February of 1990, at the age of four and a half, the calf was sent to SeaWorld in Ohio,8 where for eight months she performed in a show with whales she barely knew, followed by a seven-month stint at SeaWorld San Diego. In May 1991, she was flown to SeaWorld San Antonio.9