My experience in France with orcas unaccustomed to humans in the water only reinforces my belief that while the relationship between trainer and whale can be beautiful, the overall situation—that of captivity—makes the orcas dysfunctional and dangerous.
Every now and then, the public got an inkling of this. An episode of aggression with a trainer could not be hidden, and it frequently made the news. Most of the time, the trainer would laugh it off in public—and the media would move on. But the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 brought a double-whammy that the corporation is still reeling from—and which changed my life and my career forever.
It was the morning of Christmas Eve 2009. I was already anxious because Takara was due to give birth any moment. All of the trainers at Shamu Stadium were on call to rush to the pool to help out when it happened. When my phone rang, however, it was not to ask me to assist at the birth of Takara’s calf. Management had just received news about an incident at Loro Parque, a marine park associated with SeaWorld in the Canary Islands in Spain. Keto, a 14-year-old male orca with whom I had worked briefly in California, had just killed a trainer named Alexis Martinez during a training session. Scarpuzzi—whose official title is vice president of Zoological Operations at the California park—was on his way to Spain to meet with the SeaWorld supervisor at Loro Parque, who had been sent over from the California park and reported to Scarp. We were told that the supervisor was so distraught that Scarpuzzi was unable to get details from him over the phone.
For a few days to almost a week depending on the park, as a precaution, all waterwork with orcas stopped at the three US SeaWorld facilities—though trainers, including myself, were back in the pools with the whales before we got any details of what happened. It was imperative for SeaWorld to figure out what had gone wrong. All four killer whales at Loro Parque were owned by SeaWorld and came from SeaWorld’s parks and breeding programs. About three weeks would pass before we got the full story.
Scarpuzzi returned from Spain, stopping in Florida, then Texas, on the way to California, to present his findings to SeaWorld Shamu Stadium trainers, showing us underwater and aerial video footage of the incident. It was admirably thorough and detailed. And chilling to watch. We knew how it would turn out, that a fellow trainer would be dead at the end of it.
The training session had started at about 11 a.m. in seemingly normal fashion, with Alexis and Keto going through routine behaviors. Standing on the edge of the pool, Alexis asked the orca to do a “TNT” (as in dynamite), a behavior in which the whale swims from the back pool, underwater and unseen, to the front show pool, where he breaks the surface of the water with his massive tail flukes. Keto did it correctly and he was bridged and called over by another trainer, who asked the orca to slide-out and rewarded him with fish. That trainer subsequently emptied his bucket and filled it with water with which to splash Keto.
The same trainer then sent Keto swimming along the perimeter of the show pool back toward Alexis, who was waiting in the corner. He rewarded the orca with a rub down. At that point, Alexis got into the water with Keto to practice the stand-on spy hop—the same behavior during which I had broken my ribs just two months earlier, when I slipped off Takara. Unlike the hydro or rocket hop—where the whale throws you into the air—in the stand-on spy hop, the trainer maintains contact with his or her feet on the rostrum of the whale as the orca clears almost the entire length of his or her body vertically out of the water. The trainer remains balanced dramatically on the tip of the whale’s rostrum as both rise until gravity brings them both back vertically into the pool.
Keto reached the proper height but came up in a bit of a twist, which sent Alexis off balance, and he fell off the rostrum. Because the behavior did not come off successfully, Alexis did not reward Keto. Instead, he issued what trainers call a “Least Reinforcing Scenario” (LRS)—eye contact and a short, three-second pause that teaches the whales that they failed but still have the opportunity for reinforcement if they remain calm. The neutral LRS was developed sometime in the 1980s after whales reacted badly—as in lunging at the trainers—when they received a signal that indicated they had failed.
If a whale responds to the LRS by remaining calm, the trainer may choose to give the orca some kind of reward (in behavioral terms “on a ratio”). Keto was calm; and so Alexis returned to stage with Keto and rewarded him with a snowball of ice. They then proceeded to try the spy hop again. Keto again reached the proper height but still twisted. Alexis fell off again. Alexis issued another LRS. Keto was called over by another trainer at the slide-out and fed with fish before being sent back for more work with Alexis, who remained in the water.
Alexis grabbed Keto’s rostrum with both hands to steer the whale underwater toward the stage for what is called a “stage haul-out.” That was when things began to go wrong. Keto started to take Alexis deeper than needed or normal for the behavior. Alexis let go of Keto’s rostrum so that he could float back to the surface to give the whale another LRS. But Keto positioned himself between Alexis and the stage.
SeaWorld supervisor Brian Rokeach, who was the control spotter for the session, immediately sensed what was happening and asked for an underwater tone to call Keto back to the stage and away from Alexis. Keto responded, coming toward the stage; Rokeach put his palm facing out as a hand target, a signal for Keto to come to him and rest his rostrum on the palm of his hand. This is one of the tightest forms of control with the whale because the trainer has actual physical contact with the orca. Rokeach would later say that while Keto responded to the hand target, the orca “was not fully committed” and was “big eyed and watching Alexis.” Usually, that means that the whale is only barely touching the trainer’s hand and its body and eyes are focused on something else. The incident report does not record Keto receiving primary reinforcement—fish—for responding to the hand target, just Rokeach telling Alexis to swim out of the pool.
As soon as Alexis began to swim toward the perimeter of the pool, Keto split from Brian’s control and headed for Alexis. The whale grabbed Alexis’ leg and pulled him to the bottom of the pool. Rokeach hand-slapped the water in an attempt to regain control of Keto but the whale refused to respond to that most elemental of commands. Rokeach then began to bang a bucket of fish on stage, a signal that food was available for the whale. Keto did not respond. Rokeach attempted another hand slap recall and when Keto refused the third time, Rokeach sounded the emergency alarm. The other trainers scrambled to deploy a large net to isolate Keto in the show pool. Whales—and dolphins—instinctively flee nets. It is the easiest way to prod a misbehaving orca in the direction you want it to go. (After a 2004 incident in San Antonio, nets were always on standby at the three SeaWorld stadiums and at affiliated parks like Loro Parque.) One trainer made sure the other three whales in the area were moved into one of the back pools, making sure there was a vacant one. The gate of that back pool was opened to corral Keto, once the net separated him from Alexis.
During the aggression, Keto surfaced to breathe, leaving Alexis at the bottom of the pool. Then the whale went back to get Alexis, pushing the trainer around the pool before surfacing with his body draped across his rostrum. Rokeach hand-slapped the water again, desperately trying to get the orca to respond and come to the stage. Again Keto refused. Once the net was deployed, Keto swam into the empty back pool. When the trainers attempted to close the gate, however, Keto turned around and wedged his head between it and prevented it from shutting. The trainers had to use another net to make sure he moved away from the gate so it could be secured.
The video that Scarpuzzi showed us is haunting. In one scene, underwater footage shows Keto swimming into camera range with Alexis, who looks alive. It appeared as if Keto was giving the trainer the classic pec-push to the stage. Alexis was looking directly at the lens, his eyes open. But when the video was slowed down, everyone could tell, by the way his feet and hands were loose and limp, and from the expression o
n his face, that he was gone. As the orca was penned, Alexis’ body sank to the bottom of the 36-foot deep front show pool.
With Keto secured in the back pool, Rokeach dived into the pool with another trainer to retrieve Alexis’ body. In the video, it took the supervisor only 7 seconds to reach Alexis 36 feet down. But it took him more than 30 seconds to bring Alexis to the surface because the body had filled with water. Rokeach frantically began attempting CPR, rescue breathing and even the use of a defibrillator. Paramedics arrived and took over the efforts and continued to try and restart Alexis’ heart on site and in the ambulance. He could not be revived and was pronounced dead at 11:35 a.m.
I wanted to know more. The US trainers had been hearing all sorts of stories while waiting for the official report. At the San Antonio presentation, I asked Scarpuzzi if Keto had crushed Alexis after he pulled him under. Scarpuzzi hesitated, then broke eye contact with me. He looked around the room at the other trainers and said, “We don’t know what happened. What most likely happened was that Alexis panicked as Keto grabbed his leg and pulled him under, and he drowned.”
Other trainers present during the incident and involved in the rescue attempt would later tell me that there was a massive amount of blood coming from Alexis’ body as Rokeach attempted CPR. Blood was oozing all over the stage, they said, everywhere on Alexis’ face as well as on the supervisor’s—soaking everything. The blood would have been inconsistent with the SeaWorld version of a simple drowning. But never, at any time during this meeting, or in the incident report, was there any mention of profuse bleeding from Alexis’ ears, mouth and nose, signs of massive internal injuries.
Scarpuzzi’s answer to my question became the standard response from management on the Loro Parque incident from that point forward: Alexis most likely panicked and drowned. In the documentary Blackfish, Alexis’ girlfriend described what she saw in the morgue: it was as if Alexis’ chest had exploded. The Spanish autopsy concluded that the technical cause of death was drowning, but what fundamentally led to it was “mechanical asphyxiation due to compression and crushing of the thoracic abdomen with injuries to the vital organs.”
Exactly two months after Alexis’ death, tragedy struck again. On the morning of February 24, 2010, I had just finished doing sessions with some of the whales in the back pools of SeaWorld San Antonio when I noticed the general manager of the park and some other vice-presidents and senior management come through the back gate at Shamu Stadium. I knew something serious was going on because visits by the top brass were rare. All of us were soon summoned to the trainers’ office where the general manager Dan Decker said, “There’s been an accident at the Orlando park and a trainer was killed.”
People gasped; some began to sob and bury their faces in their hands. I thought that perhaps a big waterwork act had gone wrong. Maybe a trainer’s foot slipped on a hydro or rocket hop, and they fell and broke their back or neck. That was something we were always afraid of. But then Dan said, “It’s Dawn and Tilikum and he still has her.”
The name Tilikum sent a chill through me—and most likely throughout the room. No one was allowed to do waterwork with him because he and two other orcas had killed a trainer at his first marine park before he was sold to SeaWorld. Then, in July 1999, the corpse of Daniel Dukes, who had secreted himself in SeaWorld Orlando overnight, was found dead, naked and draped on Tilikum’s back. I could feel the fear and anxiety rise in the room. “Not Dawn,” I said to myself. “It can’t be Dawn.” She was one of the most experienced and talented trainers in the corporation. This couldn’t have been an accident, I concluded even before I knew the details. This was aggression.
Like the best of experienced trainers, Dawn believed in her ability to stay safe with the whales. It was the same kind of confidence I had in my own abilities, the same as those of my most seasoned colleagues. It is a faith that you are committed to the moment you zip up your wetsuit. It’s a belief and trust in both your own behavioral knowledge and abilities as well as your relationship with the whale you are working or swimming with. The more experience you have and the deeper and longer your relationships are with orcas, the more protection you have to prevent bad things from happening. That familiarity with the whale often gives you enough time—even if just seconds—to get you safely out of a potentially catastrophic situation. Or else, if things have already turned bad, your relationship with the whale and your experience will help you redirect the orca, allowing the whale to choose to calm down and follow your signals rather than have the aggression escalate. What had happened that had made it impossible for Dawn to get out of this predicament?
The most bone-chilling words Dan said were “And he still has her.” It shook me to my core. I could wrap my brain around the fact that Tilikum had killed her. As experienced trainers, we know what these whales are capable of doing. But I was disturbed to hear that Tilikum was still holding on to her and that SeaWorld didn’t have the power to take her body away from him. How much time had passed since the incident took place, since emergency efforts were activated, since the word traveled through the bureaucracy to senior officials in Florida and then the broader corporate decision was made to tell trainers at the Shamu Stadiums in San Diego and San Antonio?
I left the office and immediately called Wendy in California. I knew she was close to Dawn and I was worried about how she was going to handle the news. She was devastated and sobbing. She had thrown up when she was told along with the other trainers in San Diego. I then thought of Lindsay in France. She and Dawn were best friends and had been in each other’s weddings. Lindsay had also worked with Tilikum in Florida before going to France. How was she going to hear about Dawn? I knew Lindsay still maintained close ties with the Florida park, but with all the chaos going on, there was a good chance that no one would think to call her. I imagined her waking up the next day, checking the computer for news and finding out that way. I tried frantically to call her. Fortunately, her mother had reached her and told her what had happened before my call. But I’ll always remember the devastation in Lindsay’s voice when I finally reached her. She was furious and wanted to hear about everything. By the time we spoke, many of the details had been revealed to us at SeaWorld. I said they were grisly but she insisted and I understood her need to know.
Dawn had been the trainer assigned to work with Tilikum for Dine with Shamu that day. All the precautions were in place—she had a spotter and she was not doing waterwork with him. As the leader of the team that trained him, she knew Tilikum extremely well, enjoying what trainers call a “strong relationship”—one in which a trainer knows exactly what to do to make sure the orca performs well. At the Dine with Shamu pool, Tilikum went through a couple of behaviors incorrectly but he was still very good overall in behavioral terms. As part of his reward, Dawn walked over to interact playfully with him, laying herself down on the pool ledge, which is only shin-high in water. Some people who have analyzed the incident say that she was in the water. But waterwork is defined as being deep enough in the pool that your body floats. Dawn was not breaking any rules or protocols.
As she lay on her stomach talking with him, Tilikum grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into the water. SeaWorld says that Tilikum yanked her into the water by her hair. But based on eyewitness and video accounts, it is almost certain that he pulled her into the water by her arm when she was lying on the porch platform interacting with him.
Dawn’s spotter at Dine with Shamu was a trainer who was senior and experienced enough to be able to work with Tilikum and to call him over in an emergency. But when the incident took place, she was downstairs at the underwater viewing area, waiting behind the glass to receive Tilikum after Dawn, as planned, directed him down the pool to entertain the visitors below. All the spotter saw was the splash as Tilikum pulled Dawn in; she ran back to the pool, but the route back up was circuitous. The only other trainer at the Dine with Shamu pool area was not qualified to work with Tilikum and
could only sound the emergency alarms. That brought the other trainers to poolside, including one who was senior enough to work with Tilikum. But all attempts to call the orca over were in vain.
Tilikum struck Dawn several times with his head, seizing her in his mouth as he dragged her under, swimming around beneath the surface with her in his jaws. He had her at various moments by her arm, by the neck and shoulder area, by her hair and by her leg.
The emergency procedures hit a few critical snags. As it was deployed, the net got stuck on the fake rocks that had been added to the pool for entertainment reasons. Meanwhile, the back pools were blocked because they were occupied by the other whales in the park. Agitated by Tilikum’s rampage, they were refusing to move from one pool to another, and a separate net had to be deployed to herd them together into another pool, in order to leave one empty specifically for Tilikum. Ultimately, rescue workers and trainers used the net to shepherd Tilikum from the Dine with Shamu pool to a med pool, which was three pools away. This med pool was the only one that had a floor that could be lifted mechanically. That was the only way rescuers were going to be able to get to Dawn. All that time, her body was in Tilikum’s mouth; and as the net forced him from pool to pool toward the lifting floor, he grew increasingly upset and possessive of her, shaking Dawn in his mouth, destroying her body.
The lifting floor of the med pool artificially beached Tilikum; he was further immobilized with a net thrown over him. Only then, about 45 minutes after the incident began, were the trainers able to get his mouth open to remove Dawn. By then, she had been scalped, her spinal cord was severed, her ribs broken, and her left arm had been torn off. One poignant symbol was recovered later from the bottom of the pool: Dawn’s whistle, the bridge between trainer and whale, our rosary and reminder of the proximity of death.
Beneath the Surface: Killer Whales, SeaWorld, and the Truth Beyond Blackfish Page 18