by David Kirby
Jeff and Samantha were sad to see Carol go. But her departure fertilized seeds of doubt that had already germinated in their own minds, seeds that would one day flourish into a full-frontal assault against their employer.
12
Whale for Sale
A decisive public outcry followed Keltie Byrne’s death when the three killer whales dragged her under the water at SeaLand of the Pacific in February 1991. Protesters appeared daily outside the theme park’s gates, rattling the quiet, upscale community of Oak Bay. SeaLand was seriously considering ending the orca shows, after twenty-three popular years.
One thing was clear: If the whales remained at SeaLand, continuing the shows would be costly and cumbersome. In June, the Coroner’s Court of British Columbia had issued a verdict in the case: Keltie died as a result of “drowning due to or as a consequence of forced submersion by orca (killer) whales, due to or as a consequence of falling into the whale pool.” Even though the whales had “thwarted” her escape, the death was ruled an accident.
Among the expert witnesses at the coroner’s inquest was Paul Spong, who came down from OrcaLab to testify about his experiences with killer whales at the Vancouver Aquarium. Paul stated that the SeaLand whales had been subjected to “severe sensory deprivation” for fourteen hours at a time in the dark metal module, and this “may well be the key to understanding the behavior of the whales” in the moment they killed Keltie.1
The five-member jury was headed by Dr. David Duffus, an associate professor at the University of Victoria and founding director of the school’s Whale Research Lab. (Duffus would become the US government’s expert witness in the legal wrangling with SeaWorld over Dawn Brancheau’s death, two decades later.) The panel recommended that the provincial Workers’ Compensation Board implement a list of seventeen different safety reforms at SeaLand to better protect not only staff, but visitors as well.2
SeaLand would need to appoint at least one person whose sole job would be to watch for any breach in safety precautions “by the general public or SeaLand staff,” the panel determined. The park would also need to implement a system for quickly isolating one or more whales in the pool; install hand- and footholds around the edges for easy exit from the water; conduct safety and emergency training for all staff; and require personal floatation devices for anyone who went onstage, amid several other improvements.
The jury seemed to accept Paul Spong’s assertion that the stress of captivity and cramped spaces contributed to the incident. “Confinement of whales in the ‘module’ should be limited to veterinary or animal husbandry functions only,” they asserted. “Separation of the whales for behavioral reasons should be accomplished using partition(s) in the main pool.”
Making matters worse, SeaLand had been warned about aggression among its whales. The alarm had been raised by a staff member in April 1990, just ten months before Keltie was killed. Animal trainer and marine biology student Eric Walters had written to the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies outlining his complaints and concerns about safety lapses at the facility. Walters was hired in May of 1987, but quit two years later after SeaLand management ignored his calls for improvements to animal welfare, and to protect the life and limb of staff and guests alike. Among his concerns he noted:3
• The three killer whales were “housed from 1730 hrs until 0800 hrs the following day in what is called the ‘module.’” Lights were kept off all night and no form of stimulation was provided. The animals cut and scraped themselves on the metal sides of the small, dark tank. “I have seen the male, Tilikum, with the ends of his flukes abraded and bleeding.” The tight space “leads to conflict between the whales, which have no options for avoiding confrontations. Often the whales’ skin shows teeth marks from aggressive action between the three, which are not just superficial tooth rakes.”
• Nootka was kept on a constant dose of antibiotics the entire time Walters worked there. “She receives exceedingly high doses of tetracycline every day: 56,000 mg. (about 2 ounces). She has been receiving this drug for over 3.5 years on a daily basis.” Walters claimed that one of the veterinarians repeatedly warned against the practice, but his pleas were ignored by management. One supervisor reportedly asked, “Why stop if the animal appears healthy?” Nootka was also diagnosed with anemia, and the antibiotic seemed to boost her red blood cell count, he said.
• Noise from the harbor at Oak Bay was entering the tanks through the nylon-mesh nets, disturbing the whales. “When a hydrophone is lowered into the pool there is a constant roar from the props and pumps in the marina.” In addition, sewer runoff and low salinity levels in the bay were likely causing health problems. Oil slicks from pumped-out boat bilges would routinely enter the pool.
• The orcas were becoming increasingly aggressive with each other. One time Nootka chased a tankmate into the module and ended up smashing her head on the metal side. Blood ran from her blowhole, but “no veterinarians were called until the next day, demonstrating negligence on the part of SeaLand.”
• Park staff members were underpaid, underqualified, and undertrained. “SeaLand’s policy seems, ironically, to specifically hire those with little or no experience with marine mammals. SeaLand, for the most part, ignores all conferences that are offered and provides very little in the way of public education. Therefore, most of the information that is expressed to the public is either inaccurate or out of date.”
• SeaLand was a hazardous place to work. “I have rescued two trainers from the killer whales,” Walters charged. On two occasions Nootka had pulled people into the water. But even after those incidents, no precautions were taken other than banning staff from physically touching any of the whales “for a few weeks.”
“I feel that sooner or later someone is going to get seriously hurt,” Walters concluded with chilling prescience.
Walters did not write a second, I-told-you-so letter following Keltie’s death, though it must have been tempting. On April 1, 1991, a few weeks after the incident, he sent a nine-page memo to the British Columbia coroner’s office, which had asked him for an assessment of the facts as he saw them. This time, he provided more details about conditions at SeaLand and the acts of aggression, especially by Nootka, he had witnessed. They were anything but “accidents.”4
In the first instance, Nootka grabbed a camera from the hands of a startled tourist. Lead trainer Steve Huxter ran over and tried to pry the camera from the orca’s jaws. “The whale pulled back when Mr. Huxter was holding onto the camera strap and I watched as he was pulled into the pool,” Walters wrote. “He then exclaimed to me, ‘For Christ’s sakes, Eric, pull me out!’ I then reached out my hand and he grabbed it, exclaiming, ‘She’s got hold of my leg!’”
Huxter was yanked back toward the stage, and Nootka ultimately relinquished his leg. Walters lifted his boss from the water and onto the floating deck. Huxter stood up and “nonchalantly continued his conversation with some of the visitors,” Walters wrote. Nootka’s act had been deliberate, but gentle. There were “no visible marks on his leg in the area where the whale had been holding him.”
The next assault was more serious. Walters was working the killer whale show along with two other trainers, including a young woman named Henriatte Huber, who was stationed on the far end of the stage. Huber was speaking to the audience through a wireless mike while working with one of the whales. Then Walters saw her fall into the pool.
“I immediately ran from my position to where she was holding onto the stage from within the pool. I pulled her out and noticed that there was blood coming from her hand/wrists.” According to Walters, Huber had been feeding the whale (presumably Nootka) and speaking to the audience when she took her eye off the animal. “It grabbed/bit her wrist which caused her to lose her balance and fall into the pool. There was a lot of blood coming out because the whale’s tooth had punctured her artery.”
No report was filed in the case. “Therefore NOTHING was done as a result of the particular incident,” Walters
wrote. Meanwhile, the no-touch policy was heeded for just a few weeks before Huxter himself returned to physical contact with Nootka.
Other incidents were also unreported, Walters wrote. “I can remember giving Nootka the cue for a kiss, and she came up with her mouth open and attempted to grab my hand. On another occasion, a blind member of the public was brought down to pat Nootka’s tongue and she closed her mouth on the woman’s hand.” Still another time, Nootka clamped her teeth down on Walter’s own hand. It took some time to convince her to release him, and the bite left his hand bruised, though not seriously damaged. He reported the incidents to his superiors, who once again forbid anyone from touching Nootka or performing the “kiss behavior” with her. Once again, the ban only lasted a few weeks. “In the case of the blind lady being held, [management] told the trainers to not let members of the public down on the stage for the time being. This policy stood except when Mr. Huxter had someone down that he knew and he would allow his ‘friends’ down to the stage.”
SeaLand was not alone in dealing with aggressive orcas. “At Marineland in Niagara Falls, I was told by Mr. Huxter that one of the whales held a woman at the bottom of the pool long enough that she suffered minor brain damage,” Walters continued. “At SeaWorld in San Diego, trainers have been grabbed by killer whales and others have been held at the bottom of the pool. Still others have been hurt as a result of inexperienced trainers issuing cues to whales at the inappropriate time.” One trainer at the Vancouver Aquarium suffered a broken leg “thanks to the head of a killer whale.”
Given all those incidents, “SeaLand should have taken responsibility to inform their staff of the threat and dangers in working with such intelligent and large animals,” Walters charged. “Caution and tact should have been used when working with these animals at all times. I feel that I was not properly trained to appreciate the dangers, nor were safety measures in place to deal with any unexpected accidents.”
Walters alleged that the whales at SeaLand were understimulated and just plain bored. Ironically, an outside consultant hired by SeaLand, Bruce Stephens, had written an animal behavior handbook warning against cetacean tedium. The handbook had been distributed to park trainers. “On page 1 it states that ‘constant change in the environment of trained animals is critical to maintain their attention and positive attitude,’” Walters noted.
“Consider the dolphin. Pressed into service as an entertainer, an object of fascination for those fortunate enough to enjoy his antics, he is sometimes thought of as a financial asset rather than a thinking, feeling organism,” the manual went on. “It may be assumed by some thoughtless humans that given enough to eat and an occasional new behavior to learn, all will be well.”
Just like people, trained animals become bored with daily routines, Stephens wrote in his manual. “If you fail to provide the animals with the excitement they need, you may be certain they will create their own excitement.”
Finally, Walters told the compensation board that SeaLand’s fatal mistake had been a failure to “desensitize” the killer whales to having people in the water. “Animals will become comfortable with a new situation quickly and with little stress if they are exposed to it in small steps,” he wrote, quoting the Stephens manual. A foot in the water will quickly draw the attention of a naïve whale. But by putting a foot in the water over and over, it will “desense” the animal to accept the foot as normal. Slowly, if more and more of the person is put into the water, ultimately having a whole human in the tank is no longer a novelty. Walters predicted that after desensitization, whales would “no longer react the way the three SeaLand orcas had reacted.”
That didn’t mean that water work was safe, Walters took pains to clarify. “I am not saying that performances should include trainers in the water. What I am saying is that, in the event a trainer should end up in the pool, the whales would be experienced with respect to the appropriate response they should elicit under such a circumstance.”
Based on what he knew about killer whale training at SeaLand, Walters concluded, “The death of Ms. Byrne could have been prevented.”
Soon after the verdict, the city council of Oak Bay voted to make removal of the orcas by the end of 1993 a condition of renewing SeaLand’s lease with the city.
SeaLand had had enough: It was time to dump its whales. But what does one do with three killer whales who have been implicated in the death of a young trainer? Animal welfare advocates said the whales should be set free in local waters. But SeaLand vice president Dean Strongitharm rejected that idea, saying the Icelandic orcas would be “completely defenseless” trying to survive on their own in the ocean off British Columbia. Complicating matters, both females, Nootka IV and Haida II, were pregnant by young Tilikum.
Two months after the jury verdict, Strongitharm announced, “Part of the future of SeaLand does not include the display of killer whales.” The show would go on for now, but “we will be phasing out the killer whales.” He acknowledged that the official inquest into Keltie’s death hastened the decision. He declined to speculate on who might buy the killer whales. A year later, SeaLand would close its doors and disband altogether.
Paul Spong of OrcaLab had his own idea for how to handle Nootka, Haida, and Tilikum. They should be returned to Iceland, he said, and set free. Selling them to another marine mammal facility “would, because of their history, entail enormous risks,” Paul told the Associated Press. While generally opposed to the trade in orcas, he was particularly against the export of these whales. “That is, they killed a trainer,” he said. The three whales could be retrained to catch fish and learn other skills to survive in the ocean. “They’re extremely adaptable animals,” he told the AP. “If they can adapt to one way [to live in captivity], they can adapt to another.”
Paul noted that at least one orca, a large male named Charlie Chin, had successfully been released after extended captivity. Charlie Chin was held for more than a year in a sea pen at Pedder Bay, west of Victoria. “And he’s still out there today,” Paul said. He added that Nootka, Haida, and Tilikum would first need to spend time in a type of cetacean “halfway house” if they were ultimately going to be released into the ocean—where perhaps they could be reunited with their pods. Such a facility, a sea pen in a protected bay, would be used to train the whales for “release and recall.” Under that regime, researchers could periodically call the whales to shore to monitor their health and see how they were adapting to the wild. “We could teach the whales how to make a living again in the ocean,” Paul said. “I’m convinced it could be done.”
SeaLand ignored Paul’s advice and continued to look for a buyer. After all, no profit was made from an ocean release. Quite the opposite: Such a project would be monstrously expensive, and SeaLand wanted its money back and was not interested in investing more dollars into a halfway house for wayward whales that had killed an employee.
But who would want the animals even if two unborn calves were thrown into the bargain? The Vancouver Aquarium had no interest in Victoria’s notorious Icelandics.
That fall of 1991, SeaWorld indicated it might be willing to take in the rogue beasts.
“SeaWorld has to study the whales before determining how they would be used in shows,” Brad Andrews, vice president for zoological operations, told the media. He downplayed Keltie Byrne’s death: “I think we have to talk about what really happened. The person drowned. It was an accident.”5
In the end, SeaWorld said Tilikum, Nootka, and her calf should be sent to Orlando, while Haida and her calf should go to San Antonio. SeaWorld San Diego, meanwhile, wanted to import another orca—a captive-born two-year-old male from Marineland in Ontario, Canada.
SeaWorld needed whales. It had recently lost its seventh and eighth orcas in just five years. They were tragic deaths, and a public relations catastrophe for the company. The two deaths of 1991 did much to raise the disgust of its friends and foes alike.
On May 14, 1991, a female named Kahana had died in San Antonio
at about the age of fourteen. She was found floating in a back pool with a male and a female orca. Some outside observers wondered if she had been killed. Kahana suffered multiple fractures of the mandible and skull, lacerations exposing the brain, and severe loss of blood.6 “There was no indication the animal was in distress or had any health problems,” Bob McCullough, PR director for the Texas facility, told reporters. SeaWorld had been trying to breed Kahana, but she miscarried her calf just six months before her death. She might have been pregnant again, but McCullough did not know. Little information was released about the incident. A necropsy report later said the whale had a cancerous tumor in her brain, which is presumably what caused her to smash her skull on the side of the pool, an act of panic driven by the pain. NMFS listed the cause of death in the marine mammal inventory as “severe trauma.”
Kahana was given a cold and businesslike sendoff: “Shamu has not died. Shamu will never die,” McCullough said. “It just happens to be one of the whales who portrays one of three roles at any given time.”7
Kahana’s violent demise left SeaWorld with just twelve killer whales in its entire collection, only one of them a male. SeaWorld Florida was seeking yet another import permit for a female orca named Winnie, from Windsor Safari Park in the UK. But after Kahana died, activists vowed to block that sale. They called for Winnie to be released in Icelandic waters, where she had first been captured. “To shift an animal from Windsor Safari Park to SeaWorld is like shifting it from Leavenworth to Sing Sing,” Ben White, founder of the anti-captivity group Dolphin Rescue Brigade, told the Orlando Sentinel. “There is one option always available that is always ignored and that is to bloody well set them free.”