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

by David Kirby

  “The family really wanted this to be a very private moment” and was avoiding the media glare, said Knowles, who did manage to speak privately with some of the mourners. The subject of captivity came up frequently, and Knowles was surprised to find that many of the mourners wanted the Shamu show to continue because “this is what Dawn Brancheau would have wanted.”

  Naomi recorded the Larry King Live show and watched it the next morning. She had never seen anything quite like it. The segment quickly tumbled into a free-for-all quarrel. “Should whales be captured and forced to perform?” King asked in a loaded question. “We’re going to debate it.”

  Among the debaters that evening: Thad Lacinak; Jack Hanna of the Columbus Zoo; Jane Velez-Mitchell of CNN Headline News and an animal welfare advocate; and Ric O’Barry, the former trainer who worked on TV’s Flipper before becoming a leading advocate against captivity. O’Barry’s transformation came about after he “got tired of telling that lie about education and research,” he explained to King. “The fact is the show I was doing was nothing more than a spectacle of dominance and, in fact, a form of bad education.”

  Larry King turned to Jack Hanna: “Ric says the education part is—is a farce, for want of a better word.”

  “Well, it’s not a farce, Larry,” Hanna replied. Places like SeaWorld were educational, they helped people “grow and grow each year.” People such as himself and Ric O’Barry were able to see killer whales in the wild, but “99.9 percent of the people, Larry, in the world” would never be able to.

  When Naomi watched the show, she knew from the start that many of the industry talking points would be trotted out. Jack Hanna could recite them all, she thought. This shopworn canard about whale watching as an ultra-elitist pastime, accessible only to a minuscule and presumably wealthy sliver of the population, was bullshit. Hanna was claiming that it was easier and cheaper to go visit SeaWorld than to experience killer whales in the wild. Not necessarily.

  Adults were paying $81.99 for a ticket to SeaWorld Orlando, plus $73.99 for each child. In contrast, in the Pacific Northwest, the Victoria Clipper company ran all-day cruises from Seattle to the San Juan Islands, including a full two and a half hours dedicated to killer whale watching (as opposed to the half-hour Shamu show), narrated by a certified naturalist, for $70 per adult. Children under twelve sailed for free. A family of four could spend $312 for a day at SeaWorld, or less than half that amount, $140, on a Clipper boat. And viewing spots from the shores of the Salish Sea cost nothing.

  CNN’s Velez-Mitchell picked up on the revenue theme: “Whenever you see animal exploitation, follow the money. Larry, this is big business. The Blackstone Group, which is traded on the New York Stock Exchange, recently bought SeaWorld along with a cluster of other amusement parks for—I know you’re sitting down—2.7 billion dollars,” she said, before abruptly switching gears to animal welfare. “If you were in a bathtub for twenty-five years, don’t you think you’d get a little irritated, aggravated, maybe a little psychotic? This animal was speaking with its fins, saying, ‘Get me out of this damn tank.’”

  King asked Thad Lacinak for his response.

  “Jane, you are—you are a newscaster. You have no knowledge of what you are talking about with dolphins, whales, or anything,” he answered gruffly, without addressing the allegation that whales were getting “a little psychotic.” To Naomi, Thad was being typically dismissive of anyone not inside the clubby world of marine mammal trainers. This common, lowbrow debate tactic, she thought, sought not to dignify any specific comment with a direct response, but simply to devalue one’s opponent with an ad hominem attack.

  Then Jack Hanna joined the fray: “How are you going to love something, Larry, unless you see something? You can’t love something and save something unless you see it.”

  Naomi had heard this argument before. It was ridiculous on its face, she thought. What about dinosaurs? People, and especially kids, were crazy about dinosaurs. They loved them, without ever having laid eyes on a single one.

  Velez-Mitchell was waiting for someone to make the “Shamu is here to educate us” argument. She pounced and read a statement from the SeaWorld website: “‘This seasonal show is a rock ’n’ roll concert of unprecedented proportions combining improvisational movements of killer whales with music remixed from some of the hottest rock stars in the industry.’

  “That,” she said, “is not education.”

  King drew a deep breath. “We’re not going to resolve this tonight, but it sure is interesting,” he sighed. “Thad Lacinak, how do you respond to Jane Velez-Mitchell?”

  “Well, Jane was talking about the killer whales traveling a hundred miles a day,” Thad said. “The only reason killer whales in the wild travel that far at any given time is because they’re hunting for food.” Some killer whales in Puget Sound “hang around in areas in small coves where the salmon population is high during certain times of the year.” The whales “don’t move from that area because that’s where their food source is.”

  Naomi again bristled at the standard industry misinformation. Ecologically speaking, any species’ home range was as large as needed to support its food requirements. Animals with all their energy needs met in the immediate area evolved to have a small home range. But animals with energy requirements that were met only by widely dispersed resources evolved to cover a larger home range. Restricting an orca’s range was precisely the reason why killer whales did not thrive in captivity. You cannot switch off millions of years of evolution just because an animal is captive.

  All carnivores that are wide-ranging do poorly in captivity. Naomi was thinking of one study in particular, a 2003 paper by Ros Clubb and Georgia Mason, who analyzed data from carnivores with small home ranges and densely distributed prey, and those with large ranges and widely dispersed prey.2 The former did well enough in captivity—their health was good, they didn’t develop behavioral stereotypies (pacing, etc.), and they had lower infant mortality rates. The latter fared much worse in captivity—their health was fair to poor, they often developed stereotypies, and their infant mortality rates were higher.

  Killer whales—by Thad’s own admission—were wide-ranging. According to the pattern that Clubb and Mason described, they would do poorly in confinement. Thad could not have it both ways: either a species was adapted to be wide-ranging and therefore confinement caused it to suffer; or it didn’t need a large home range in the wild, making it more adaptable to captivity. What’s more, exercise was good for a reason: If a species evolved to be active (even because of its food requirements), then taking that away could kill.

  “Thad is only presenting half the story,” Naomi complained to Chris, who watched the show later. “If it’s because he doesn’t know the other half, then he’s being deceptively selective in what he learns. This is part of the miseducation I’m always going on about. SW chronically presents only half, or less, of the science. And they do it in an almost convincing way, just enough to mislead people.”

  Thad’s contention that some killer whales “hang around” in small coves in Puget Sound all summer and “don’t move from that area” ignored what was known about the Southern Resident community. If one was going to put oneself out there as an expert, Naomi thought, one should have much broader expertise in the subject.

  Then, about midway into the broadcast, Ric O’Barry dropped a bomb that is still reverberating today in the captivity debate.

  “Larry,” he announced gravely, “on the twenty-fourth of December, a SeaWorld killer whale killed its twenty-nine-year-old trainer, Alexis Martinez. Did you hear about that? That was sixty days ago.”

  King was staggered. So was Naomi. “Why didn’t we hear about that?” King asked.

  “I’m talking to trainers now at Loro Parque, who tell me that SeaWorld showed up and had the body cremated on December twenty-fifth, the very next day,” O’Barry said. “Now, we haven’t heard about it. But we’re going to hear about that, and we’re going to start hearing about
many trainers at SeaWorld that have been very seriously injured.”

  Naomi’s jaw dropped. How could something involving yet another trainer’s death, and orcas owned by SeaWorld, happen without the marine mammal community knowing about it?

  It would take more than a year and a half before all the details on the killing of Alexis Martinez (a close friend of Dawn Brancheau’s) by a SeaWorld orca would come to light. His death would figure prominently in the federal legal proceedings that were about to challenge the very idea of putting trainers in the water with the ocean’s top predator.

  This had been quite a show, and it wasn’t over yet. King turned his line of questioning toward Jack Hanna. “Wouldn’t it be obvious that whales would have a better time being free than being captured?”

  “Not necessarily, Larry. No,” Hanna protested. “Thad said it very well: A hundred years ago, man would go a hundred miles looking for food.” Then, rather jarringly, he switched rhetorical gears. “When men go up to space in the shuttle and they come back and our astronauts are killed, that’s because they wanted to discover space, find out more about what it can provide to the human world. We’re here because we love it, and we know what the results will be, Larry. It will be millions of people educated about our animal world.”

  Was Hanna really comparing Shamu shows to the space program, in terms of their scientific and educational contributions? Naomi thought he was implying that the risks involved were equally justifiable and that the benefits were equally great.

  O’Barry did not want to discuss the space program. He still wanted to talk about the Canary Islands: “A man lost his life here, and these two guys representing SeaWorld are being very quiet about that. You may not have been able to get your staff to confirm what I said, but that’s a serious thing.” He asked the two men if they knew about the death.

  Thad said he did know, but not the details.

  Jack Hanna also knew, but he still wanted to talk space. “What about our astronauts? What are you saying, Ric? It’s called a killer whale. This is a dangerous animal. This is a job we have. Killer whale, Ric. You should know that.”

  Thad said even his five-year-old daughter “gets it: Habitat dictates behavior.”

  Now, Naomi thought, he has really stepped in it. If habitat dictated behavior, then a suboptimal habitat such as SeaWorld would dictate suboptimal behavior, such as Tilikum’s.

  After watching the show, Naomi sent an e-mail to an HSUS colleague who held particular sympathy for captive cetacean issues: “Frankly, I found the entire King show highly entertaining.” They both agreed it was definitely worth watching. “We needed only some popcorn and a giant soda to complete the experience,” Naomi joked. “What a donnybrook! Ric and Thad had some priceless moments.”

  All joking aside, Naomi had serious business to tend to. She wanted to find out more about the death at Loro Parque, and how such news could have been kept from so many people in the marine mammal community for a full two months. She reached out to colleagues such as Courtney Vail of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, Susan Millward of the Animal Welfare Institute, Bill Rossiter of Cetacean Society International, and Mark Berman of Earth Island Institute. Mark had heard about the incident at the same time as Ric, who worked with Earth Island. The paucity of information in the wider animal community astounded even Mark, who always seemed to hear about everything before anyone else did.

  The same day as the Larry King broadcast, March 1, 2010, CNN published Naomi’s take on the killing in a blog post titled “Tragedy for Two at SeaWorld.” The death had been a misfortune “for Ms. Brancheau and her devastated family, to whom I and my organization offer our condolences,” Naomi wrote. “But it is also a tragedy for Tilikum.”

  That intelligent, social killer whales were suitable for confinement in “featureless enclosures” should, “on its face, be ludicrous.” But people enjoyed their beauty and athleticism, leading society to “recast the image of these animals from ‘killer whales’ into ‘sea pandas.’” We admire their power and grace, but ignore the “irony of forcing them into straitjackets of concrete,” Naomi wrote. “We believe they are happy because they seem to be smiling.”

  It was not only tragic but “almost irrational” to assume that captivity would be in the best interest of this species. Some whales might adjust more readily than others, and some might find humans to be a decent substitute for their family, “but no orca captured from the early 1960s … through the late 1980s (when most orca captures ended due to public outcry) was ever best served by being taken from his or her mother,” she said. But now that civilization had entered the twenty-first century, perhaps things might change. Tilikum might be allowed a chance at a better life, retired to a sea pen, and given “more space and choices and stimulation.” Meanwhile, as the remaining captive killer whales aged and died, society should “let orca exhibits become a thing of the past.”

  The media furor continued as people from all sides weighed in on the tragedy. TV host and animal activist Bob Barker urged SeaWorld to release all of its animals,3 while actress Tippi Hedren (of The Birds fame) said SeaWorld should halt its animal “circus,”4 and actor Matt Damon said the place should be closed down altogether.5

  People had lots of ideas about what to do with Tilikum, but the most macabre was offered by the American Family Association. The conservative group issued a decree that Tilikum should be stoned to death in accordance with biblical law.6 “If the counsel of the Judeo-Christian tradition had been followed, Tilikum would have been put out of everyone’s misery back in 1991 and would not have had the opportunity to claim two more human lives,” proclaimed AFA leader Bryan Fischer. “Says the ancient civil code of Israel, ‘When an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten.’”

  Fischer didn’t stop there. The Bible called for the owner of an animal responsible for killing someone to die as well. “The Scripture soberly warns,” he said, “if one of your animals kills a second time because you didn’t kill it after it claimed its first human victim, this time you die right along with your animal.”

  * * *

  The New York–based Blackstone Group, owner of SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment, is one the world’s largest private equity and financial advisory firms. Its chairman and cofounder Stephen Schwarzman has amassed an estimated worth approaching $6 billion. He is hardly shy of the limelight—or controversy.

  Schwarzman was perhaps best known for a notoriously extravagant sixtieth birthday party he threw for himself in 2007 at Manhattan’s cavernous Park Avenue Armory. The multimillion-dollar fête, lavished with coverage by the New York press, included performances by comedian Martin Short and musicians Rod Stewart, Marvin Hamlisch, and Patti LaBelle—who was backed up by the Abyssinian Baptist Church choir as she belted out a gushing ballad to the tycoon. A large portrait of Schwarzman was reportedly couriered to the armory from the living room of his gargantuan, $37 million Park Avenue apartment (once owned by John D. Rockefeller) just for the occasion. Guests included Colin Powell, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, and the city’s powerful Catholic cardinal Edward Egan.

  Schwarzman, a major backer of the 2008 McCain-Palin ticket, took some hits from some corners of the American media when he attacked President Barack Obama in 2010 for trying to raise taxes on private equity firms, such as Blackstone. “It’s a war,” Schwarzman said of the fight with the White House. “It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.”7

  With that caliber of opposition, Naomi and her colleagues at HSUS harbored few illusions about their chances of convincing Blackstone to let Tilikum retire to a sea pen far away from SeaWorld. But that didn’t stop them from trying.

  In early March, Wayne Pacelle, the charismatic and sometimes controversial president of HSUS since 2004, sent a letter drafted by Naomi to Stephen Schwarzman, entreating him for Tilikum’s release. Pacelle began by expressing condolences on Dawn’s death on behalf of the HSUS’s 11 million members and constituents.


  “I wanted you to have the benefit of our firsthand knowledge and experience concerning Keiko,” he wrote. HSUS suggested devising a similar plan for Tilikum. “We are not proposing a release into the open ocean, but a transfer of the whale to a sea pen that will allow him to live in a more suitable environment.”

  This third fatal incident involving Tilikum “appears to have been an escalation of his previous behavior—he actively pulled Ms. Brancheau into the tank with him,” the letter continued. “Clearly Tilikum is a hazard to his trainers.” Putting more distance between the whale and his trainers might protect them, Pacelle wrote, but such measures would also “increase his isolation and decrease his well-being.” Given the safety issues, and the prospect of his remaining in a small enclosure for the rest of his life, HSUS felt that a sea pen would be best, “in Iceland or a similarly suitable location, with all deliberate speed.” Pacelle then requested a meeting with Schwarzman.

  The response was predictably harsh and dismissive. SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment president and CEO Jim Atchison wasted no time in attacking HSUS for its role “in the tragic release experiment involving Keiko.” That episode demonstrated the “cruelty” of trying to release a long-captive marine mammal and showed a “lack of expertise in matters of marine mammal care and the vast complexities of reintroduction involving even those animals well suited for return to the wild. Under no reasonable interpretation could Keiko be considered a suitable release candidate.”

  The Keiko “experiment” had cost tens of millions of dollars, money that could have saved thousands of other animals, but instead “cost an innocent animal its life,” Atchison wrote. He said that virtually all experts on the release of marine mammals had agreed that the Keiko project was “a disgraceful act,” and its execution, by any measure, “irresponsible and reckless.” Keiko had suffered serious injuries in the wild and then died “prematurely and unnecessarily.” He should have lived out the rest of his life with other killer whales “in an accredited and professionally operated zoological institution.” Atchison did not mention that SeaWorld itself had rejected taking Keiko back in 1996.