Beneath the Surface: Killer Whales, SeaWorld, and the Truth Beyond Blackfish

by John Hargrove

  California was the champion of a training philosophy of rewards that looked beyond food. The trainers there believed in challenging the whales—the orcas certainly had the intelligence to take up a challenge. We let them show it. SeaWorld San Antonio would sometimes use secondary reinforcers—like rubdowns and playtimes—but not to the extent or in the same context they were used in the California park. We were taught to believe it was not only possible but that it was a good thing to train whales without food to reinforce behavior. In San Diego, we regularly interacted with the whales during training sessions or shows, including waterwork—without using fish for reinforcement. That would be inconceivable in Texas.

  In California, we removed the immediate focus from food. That increased the importance of the whale’s relationship with the trainer and his or her ability to make the orca feel rewarded and positive about every training situation. It raised the relationship to a higher level. There was, of course, always a bucket of food readily available in case of an emergency.

  When material rewards were not the sole method of reinforcing behavior, the whales were forced to think more, to associate the human trainer with complex linkages of stimuli. The process, I believe, enriched their existence in SeaWorld. We also reinforced them with playtime, which again broadened their concept of reward to include physical interactions with trainers and with each other. Using this variety of reinforcement, the whales were more motivated and more engaged with their trainers.

  Experienced trainers at the other facilities knew of San Diego’s philosophy—and many of them disagreed with it. Even though all three parks are part of a single corporate SeaWorld, each facility has its own management—with varying approaches and styles with regard to orca training. SeaWorld San Antonio did not believe in elevating risk levels by interacting with the whales without primary reinforcement—that is, fish. In California, on the other hand, the trainers were taught that by doing just that, you developed stronger relationships with the whales—and were therefore safer.

  The play sessions and trainer interactions are rewards in and of themselves. In behavioral jargon, any reward other than food is categorized as secondary reinforcement. But secondary doesn’t mean it is unimportant. Takara liked to solicit for her favorite secondary rewards. She enjoyed having her tongue rubbed and patted, and me to grab it and shake it. She loved for me to massage the very back corners of her mouth where her upper and lower jaws connected. She seemed to enjoy this more than fish. Sometimes, with each perfect act, she would raise a massive pectoral flipper, clearly indicating to me that she wanted me to grab onto it. As I held on, she would swim on her side with that pec up until I dropped off. Then she’d come back at me with the opposite pectoral flipper up and I’d grab it to make another circuit around the pool with her. Her mother, Kasatka, loved to do exactly the same thing. We motivated the whales to perform by giving them the flexibility to solicit the type of rewards they preferred. You could hear how excited they were by the vocalizations they produced throughout.

  Play fulfilled some of the deeper needs of the orcas. I was aware even then of how boring and sterile their captive lives were. In the evenings, they would float in limited space, almost never having access to all the pools in Shamu stadium, usually restricted to just one or two. There, barely able to move, they’d wait for the next day’s training sessions and Shamu shows. Young orcas have so much energy and curiosity—I could sense the desperation sink in when they finally realize their fate is to be one of repetitive performance and routine. The job of a good trainer is keeping the lives of the whales as interesting as possible. Even if you performed for food, how happy could you be if you were fed the same salmon and mackerel time after time? For a human, it would be like eating nothing but boiled chicken breast at every meal.

  I know from my experience with the whales that they were motivated by a greater variety of reinforcement. There is a practical reason to make play and creative interaction part of a whale’s curriculum and reinforcement. What would happen if you had an emergency and didn’t have fish with which to reward a whale and you found yourself with an orca that always worked with a trainer with a bucket of food? You’re stuck with no leverage with the whale. You have got to train your whales not to focus on the food. You actually condition a whale to be more relaxed when they aren’t single-mindedly focused on what’s in the bucket. This is when the quality of your relationship comes through. Psychological reinforcement can take many forms. Takara loved for you to drag her by her tail flukes along the perimeter of the pool—a backbreaking exercise for a trainer. You could hear her excitement in her vocalizations. Orcas can sense affection and they can return it.

  Before waterwork becomes a completely lost art, let me leave a record of what it entailed. Orca trainers had to reach three increasingly complex levels of skill in the water to remain at Shamu Stadium. With each level came a greater understanding of SeaWorld’s orcas.

  The Behavioral Review Committee (BRC) had the final say on who got to go into the water with the orcas. Some trainers promoted to Shamu never got to the point where they were allowed by the BRC to do waterwork at all. In California, the BRC was so strict it specified which trainer was allowed to get into the water with which whale. The committee divided waterwork into three different levels. Level 1 comprised the most basic behaviors. Level 2 included the more advanced behaviors such as the haul-outs, surf rides and some spy hop behaviors (variations of which include hugging, sitting and standing on the whale as it rises vertically with its body almost entirely out of the water). You couldn’t perform in shows unless you had reached the second level.

  Only after you provided evidence of full proficiency in levels 1 and 2 were you allowed to perform the signature behaviors of the show: the hydros and rocket hops. Your fitness was key. Not every trainer who got to Shamu Stadium got to the third level. In fact, few did. And if they didn’t, they eventually were moved out of Shamu.

  As the trainers moved through the levels, each developed his or her own style and strategies about the work. My fellow trainers and I disagreed about some techniques. When I was working through a new set of behaviors with the whales, I wanted to challenge the orcas and let them solve problems, to prospect for a solution to a training challenge. Most of my sessions lasted no more than 10 to 12 minutes—though I also made sure to throw in a longer or shorter session now and then for the sake of variety.

  My style was to nurture the whale—to let them know that I was on their side. If a whale I was working or swimming with was being exceptional during a performance, I would just let the music play, avoiding the show pressure to hurry the whale along, just hanging out and swimming with the orca, rubbing his or her belly with my feet. The entertainment department managers would always complain when I did this, saying I was holding up the show. I’d tell them off, saying my job was to take care of the whale. My managers, of course, always told me “John, you need to work on your interdepartmental skills.” I didn’t care for that or the entertainment department’s management. I cared for the whales.

  A good trainer is always varying the type of reinforcement for the orcas. They are incredibly smart and aware that you are taking the time to reward them properly. If a trainer is always rushing whales to the rear pools immediately after a show, throwing fish into their mouths automatically, without making eye contact, the whales sense you are treating them perfunctorily—and they will remember that. I always tried to add the extra rub and eye contact that said thank-you—and that made a difference. These are the kinds of details that took your relationship with a whale to another level. I’ve always believed and taught that the stronger your relationship with a whale, the more layers of protection you have in the event that whale becomes upset. This can help prevent an aggression or can help you safely get out of one. Of course, no matter how strong your relationship is, it does not guarantee that the whale will not slip into the dark side. SeaWorld’s history proves that we wi
ll never be able to predict orca behavior completely—certainly not aggressions.

  4

  “In the Care of Man”

  How do killer whales sleep?

  At SeaWorld, we taught the whales to be comfortable at night in various combinations—all together or alone. SeaWorld’s orcas generally sleep motionless on the surface of their pools. But Corky, who was born in the wild, would take a breath, descend into the depths of the pool, stay there for about three to five minutes then come back up to breathe again.

  We call it sleep, but it isn’t exactly what humans do. We lose consciousness when we retire to bed. But only one half of the whale’s brain switches off when it sleeps because in the wild, the marine mammal has to remain conscious to breathe in the ocean and to be aware of the many hazards that may approach. Even a sleeping whale, floating still in captivity, knows what you are up to if you wander by. They are always hyperaware about what goes on in their environment.

  The various SeaWorld parks have their own policies about sleeping arrangements for their whales. In Orlando, the whales that usually performed together, slept together. The Texas facility almost always put all its whales together each night. California varied the groupings: sometimes, all of them were gathered in the same place; at other times, the whales were mixed and matched, sleeping in different pools so they could get used to each other and the experience of being in diverse locales; sometimes, we’d slowly wean individual whales away from their companions and have them learn to sleep by themselves.

  San Diego’s reason for diversifying sleeping arrangements was practical. It produced a more relaxed orca, one who accepted, without being stressed, being placed in pools with any combination of other whales, or even being able to sleep alone. Whales who had not been trained to sleep alone would be distressed if, all of a sudden, they had to be separated from the rest of their companions. The distress would only aggravate their frustration and lead to more problems. There were also occasions when a whale would have to travel alone—for example, when shipped to another park.

  But training an orca to sleep by themself is a difficult endeavor because killer whales are so social. We had to get an individual orca used to solitude a half-step at a time, sharing sleep times with another whale in shorter and shorter intervals before the other whale was completely withdrawn. In the end, the whale would finally be comfortable alone. Some whales took to this better than others. Some would emit worried vocalizations as they went through the anxiety of separation from their companions.

  How long do whales need to sleep? At SeaWorld, we set up an arbitrary rule at all three Shamu Stadiums that eight hours of total darkness should be scheduled for the orcas and that no sound should disturb the whales during that period. All construction work on the site had to stop; and rehearsals for the shows the entertainment department wanted to stage were halted. Lights out were mandated at a certain point each night so that the whales got the eight hours. In SeaWorld San Antonio, where I rejoined SeaWorld, I was a Senior 1 Trainer with the authority to cut the lights no matter who needed the stadium grounds. Sometimes the construction workers or, more often than not, the entertainment department’s management was adamant about trespassing on the orcas’ bedtime. It often provoked a fight.

  I let whoever wanted to cross me know that they weren’t calling the shots in that situation. I was. We had a corporate rule to protect the whales in this specific situation. The show doesn’t have to go on all the time for them. Give them their sleep. Even the corporation realized that and invariably came down on my side in any quarrel with the entertainment department. After all, SeaWorld didn’t become a $2.5 billion company because of sequins and choreography. It was built on the backs of captive killer whales.

  One of the catchphrases of SeaWorld’s ideology is that the animals in its collection benefit from being “in the care of man.” And, for visitors, the physical appearance of the parks is impressive. The pools of SeaWorld are gigantic—if you are a human being. Including the filtration system, San Diego has 6.2 million gallons of water in its combined orca pools, or close to the volume of ten Olympic-size pools. San Antonio has 4.5 million gallons. Orlando has 5.9 million. What we call the med (short for medical) pool—a shallower transitional area for moving whales between larger show areas and where we could tend to some of their needs—is only eight feet deep, a few feet deeper than a lap pool in a nice urban gym. But all of that water is a drop in the bucket compared to the killer whales’ natural habitat. It is like putting a whale in a bathtub—squeezing down the orca to human scale to benefit the profit motives of SeaWorld Entertainment Inc.

  Orcas cannot easily maneuver in the med pool—and yet the show business side of SeaWorld has forced the trainers to use it as a staging area for Shamu Stadium spectacles. For a human being, it would be like being stuck in a doctor’s waiting room except that the waiting room is a closet without a ceiling, exposing the top of your head to the hot sun. Regularly whales have had to wait in that pool for 15 minutes before, 30 minutes during, and sometimes 15 minutes after a performance, their giant dorsal fins put at even greater risk of drying out. That is not just a once-in-a-while occurrence. There are as many as seven shows a day, each running about 25 to 30 minutes, and some whales perform in all seven. If they aren’t waiting to go on to perform, they may be placed in the eight-foot-deep med pool as they wait to be featured for park guests who sit at the back poolside tables of the Dine with Shamu restaurant, an area where visitors can eat as they watch the orcas swim. I regularly saw one or more whales in the med pool for hours at a time. I fought to stop it from happening, sending an email to the general manager raising the Animal Welfare Act and questioning the legality of forcing the whales into the shallow med pool. Management was not happy and I lost that battle.

  Humans cannot replicate the ocean. The 30 whales currently owned by SeaWorld must make do in the microcosm of the marine park’s facilities. It is a paradoxical empire: the chemically processed water in the pools is purer than that of the ocean, but it is not anywhere near what is natural for the whales; the orcas cavort for the crowds but they do not get enough physical exercise because there is not enough room to allow them to swim normally. These whales live lives of quiet desperation and intense boredom. It is the kind of ennui that can be fatal—to both whale and human.

  Orcas can be only so accommodating. Their intelligence and emotions are as mercurial as humans’, if not more so. You have to be able to be sensitive to the way a whale is feeling if you want the whale to stick with you. Being inattentive to their feelings—and their acute sensitivity to environment and their complex relationships with other whales—can be potentially deadly.

  My frightening encounter with Freya—the first and only time in my career I was truly unnerved by killer whale aggression—arose from several factors. It took place in the south of France, where I was working with the whales of the Marineland in Antibes, an invaluable overseas assignment that I began in 2001 after rising to a senior level in SeaWorld San Diego. One of the keys to understanding Freya is her relationship with her son, Valentine—Val for short. It isn’t quite what you’d expect of a human mother-child interaction. It is one of social dominance—and human trainers have to pay attention to the sociology of orca families in order to understand why they choose to behave the way they do.

  Val was just six years old when I got to work and swim with him. Born in captivity, he was enormous and beautiful, with an impressive head and, at that time, a great tall straight dorsal fin. Freya had been captured off the coast of Iceland in 1982, when she was one or two years old. I imagine she must remember what it was like to be free, to be able to swim for hundreds of miles a day, unconfined by the tight walls and shallowness of concrete pools.

  She was also female, which meant that she had social precedence over any male orca. Killer whale society is matriarchal; the dominant female has command authority over all the whales in her famili
al unit. In marine parks, from what I have learned by observation and experience, it is a prominence that is earned by will and by force. You cannot say “no” to the dominant female orca with impunity; you do not deny her the rights and privileges of her rank.

  Just before Freya turned on me, I had a training session where I swam with Val in one of the back pools of the stadium. His mother was in an adjacent pool with the gate closed, separating her from Val and me. The young male did so well in training, mastering the behaviors I wanted to inculcate in him so quickly, that I decided to reward him with playtime in the water. During this period when I was with Val, I noticed that Freya was watching us intently from her pool; I thought she was enjoying the sight and decided to include her in the playtime. That would also allow her to interact with Val, part of our overall strategy to get them used to performing together in public. Mother and son were having trouble with that.

  I got Val to propel me through the water, foot-pushing me with his rostrum, toward Freya’s gate. I touched her from over the top of the gate and fed her some fish—signs we had taught her in training to mean she and I were going to begin our interaction. I continued to swim with Val on his side of the gate—another sign that whatever Freya and I were going to do would also have to involve him. I continued to touch and feed her repeatedly as I swam with Val.

  As part of this process, I swam off with Val, getting him to perform certain behaviors or just playing with him. At the same time, I’d ask him to go back and forth toward the gate of Freya’s pool, steering him with my foot on his rostrum or having him pec-push me to her gate. Or I would ride on his back as he carried me at the surface around the perimeter of the pool and approached his mother at the gate. All of this was done to make her feel comfortable with what I was hoping to get her to do: to work with the two of us.