The initial statement by the Orange County sheriff’s office—which has jurisdiction over SeaWorld Orlando—was that Dawn had slipped and fallen into the pool. Jim Solomons, the spokesman for the sheriff, made that announcement after he had emerged from a private meeting with SeaWorld’s president, Dan Brown; the corporation’s vice president of Animal Training, Chuck Tompkins; and Orlando’s curator of Animal Training, Kelly Flaherty-Clark. They stood to Solomons’ left as he spoke. None of them attempted to correct him.
Only after park guests who had witnessed the incident started coming forward to give accounts that contradicted the statement did SeaWorld officials issue another version. They said that the sheriff’s office was wrong: Dawn had not fallen, but Tilikum had grabbed her ponytail, which he saw as something novel. In effect, SeaWorld declared, it was an act of playful exploration; Tilikum thought Dawn’s hair was a new stimulus; he wasn’t going after her in an aggressive way; Tilikum did not attack Dawn.
What SeaWorld did not explain at the time was that the whales in the corporation have been desensitized to ponytails. In the intricate process during which SeaWorld’s trainers plan out their daily dealings with the orcas, we work through all possible scenarios—including what objects may potentially annoy the whales. Trainers long ago decided that whales must be taught not to pay attention to ponytails, that the hairstyle of the trainer should mean nothing to them. Tilikum, like every whale in the SeaWorld system, had long shrugged off the novelty of ponytails. SeaWorld would not admit to this until it had to provide testimony in court for the case OSHA brought against the corporation as a result of Dawn’s death.
The more outrageous part of SeaWorld’s account of what happened is its insinuation that Dawn’s death was the unfortunate result of a playful encounter and of Tilikum’s habit of not giving up objects once he had taken possession of them, clinging to them like a child with its favorite toy. The implication is that Dawn was wrong to wear her hair in a ponytail.
There was nothing playful about the way Tilikum treated her. He destroyed her body, all the while emitting vocals indicating he was extremely upset, according to trainers who were part of the rescue effort, and he refused every attempt to be emergency recalled. Three years after her death, as SeaWorld waged a PR battle against the documentary Blackfish, the company sent out a refutation of the film that included the line, “Tilikum did not attack Dawn.”
SeaWorld held to that line when OSHA fined it for the Tilikum incident. Challenging the ruling, SeaWorld brought forward their expert witness Jeff Andrews, a former trainer I had worked with in California, to testify that Tilikum—despite a history SeaWorld trainers knew—had never been an aggressive whale and that Dawn had made the mistake of letting her hair float into the water, which tantalized the whale. Tilikum, Andrews said, “didn’t really intend to kill Dawn; he was just controlling her movements so that she couldn’t reach the surface. . . . The only thing that led to this event was a mistake by Ms. Brancheau. From the moment he pulled her into the water until she drowned, Tilikum was never aggressive toward her.”
The judge presiding over SeaWorld’s appeal would have none of that. He pointed out that Andrews had never worked with Tilikum, had never questioned eyewitnesses and had not reviewed the final investigation file of the sheriff’s department or read Dawn’s autopsy report. The judge also said that Andrews had not read Tilikum’s official SeaWorld profile, and that he had relied solely on the information given to him by Chuck Tompkins, who was not present when the incident occurred. Andrews had not worked for SeaWorld or with any killer whales for nine years before Dawn’s death. Since his testimony, Andrews has been rehired by SeaWorld as a vice president.
We will never know why Tilikum made that decision to grab Dawn or whether he intended to kill her. What every experienced trainer knows with 100 percent certainty is that it was an aggressive act—the very kind we try to avoid by meticulously documenting orca behavior. I never worked in the Orlando park nor have I ever trained Tilikum. But I know what orca aggression is.
There may well have been other factors that contributed to that tragedy, but SeaWorld has said little about them. What has not been explored in the official accounts is the fact that the other whales at the park appeared to have already been agitated before Tilikum grabbed Dawn. A Shamu Stadium show had to be abruptly ended because the whales were displacing each other socially and refusing to come over in response to trainers’ signals. The whales in the community of a single park feed off each other’s agitation—and that frustration could very well have been transmitted to Tilikum over at the Dine with Shamu pool. The answer may lie in the broader detailed records that SeaWorld keeps of whale behavior—not just of Tilikum but of the other whales in the park on the day of the attack. But it may take years—and a lawsuit—to get the company to make the data public.
The deaths of Alexis and Dawn were crucial to waking me to the reality of SeaWorld. The obfuscation over Tilikum’s intentions served no one’s interests, certainly not the whale’s. For some of us within the corporation, it only offered more evidence that SeaWorld was defending him because he was one of the most prolific suppliers of sperm for its breeding program. But SeaWorld’s actions also proved that the corporation did not have the backs of the trainers who put their lives at risk for the sake of the whales. Alexis and Dawn loved their jobs and loved the orcas they worked with. But after they were killed, SeaWorld blamed them for their own deaths.
I had seen the dark side of SeaWorld.
10
Losing My Religion
I admired the way SeaWorld sent Mike Scarpuzzi to all its facilities to explain the circumstances surrounding Alexis Martinez’s death in Spain. The video that Scarpuzzi provided us with, as well as his almost second-by-second reconstruction of the horrific December 2009 incident, was crucial to trainer understanding of worst-case scenarios. We could learn from the tragedy—learn more about how to keep ourselves safer in our daily dealings with the whales.
In a disturbing contrast, SeaWorld did not distribute an incident report to the trainers after Dawn died. I asked to see the video that I knew existed because a camera is always on to record what happens in the pools. I was told, “Leave it alone. There is nothing to learn from it.” But I wanted to see if Dawn had tried to work through the aggression, to see how she might have been strategizing to get out of the pool. Did she have time to make eye contact with Tilikum? To try to bring him back from the dark side? Chuck Tompkins finally told me, “John, there is nothing there behaviorally.”
I’d get more of the inside story after I visited the Florida facility in December 2011. Every year, each park in the SeaWorld system tries to send one trainer to one of the other facilities. It wasn’t really to learn from each other. As is evident from the way Lindsay and I argued over behavior protocols in Antibes, San Diego, San Antonio and Orlando were all very much set in their ways. But it was a chance to get to see what the differences were—and a chance to network. I’d get into a wetsuit and be on stage and poolside, watching how the trainers interacted with the whales during sessions and shows. Being in Orlando also gave me a chance to see how the park was dealing with Tilikum in the aftermath of Dawn’s death.
Tilikum was essentially kept in isolation and, even when he was in a show, his presence was limited. I saw him perform with Trua, Takara’s son, and the younger orca clearly did not want to be with him, leaving the pool they shared as quickly as he could. Toward the end of my Florida trip, Tilikum fell ill. His blood work came back with worrisome readings and he was heavily medicated with dexamethasone, a steroid that is usually given as a last resort. After I got back to Texas, he fell even more seriously ill and SeaWorld was afraid they might lose him. But he recovered. The talk among trainers, however, was that he had, at one point in his illness, lost approximately 1,000 pounds.
None of the trainers who were working with Tilikum when I was visiting Florida seemed a
nxious about being in close proximity with him. No one, of course, could do waterwork with him. None of us could with any of the whales since Dawn’s death. In the immediate aftermath of the February 2010 tragedy, SeaWorld had voluntarily suspended waterwork with all orcas. But in August 2010, OSHA ruled that SeaWorld trainers had to stay out of the water completely. SeaWorld sued to throw out that ruling and a $75,000 fine imposed by the agency.
The trainers who worked with Tilikum all seemed to love him. Right after the incident with Dawn, some had been openly contemptuous of Tilikum, with at least one throwing food at him and yelling abuse instead of carefully feeding him. There was no evidence of that unprofessional behavior when I was on the premises. That says a lot about the trainer mind-set—understanding that, as intelligent as the orcas are, you can’t impose your thinking on them.
As a member of the big SeaWorld family, I’d met some of the Florida trainers before; in fact, I’d known some of them for years. As the week of my visit went by, I would hear about what happened on that day as they tried to rescue Dawn. The one story that moved me the most involved a highly experienced trainer named Laura Surovik—and it reflects what I believe about trainers and whales having a bond that not even tragedy can break.
Laura is probably the most experienced and knowledgeable orca trainer in SeaWorld, with 24 years of experience at Shamu Stadium. She had worked with Tilikum when he arrived in Florida in January 1992 and knew him better than anyone else. But as the result of a promotion, to become the second-highest-ranking animal curator in Orlando, Laura had been reassigned to Dolphin Stadium at the end of 2009. She and Dawn were best friends. They wore rings to signify the strength of that friendship. But February 24, 2010, would bring two of the most important beings in Laura’s life in fatal conflict. It was like having a good friend kill an even better friend.
Laura was at work on her side of the marine park. She was on the phone with Kelly Flaherty-Clark, the Animal Training curator at Orlando, when Kelly said she’d just been told by Dan Brown, the park’s president, that the emergency alarm had gone off at Shamu Stadium. Laura looked at her husband, Mike, a supervisor at Sea Lion Stadium, and said, “I’ve got to go.” She drove to Shamu across the compound. It was chaos when she got there.
“Who is it?” she shouted to the crowd that had gathered.
“Tilikum and Dawn,” came the response. “He has Dawn.”
Laura ran to the platform at the Dine with Shamu pool. Tilikum had Dawn in his mouth. Laura recalled that Dawn’s hair was missing. She saw that the trainers were deploying the net to try to force Tilikum from one pool into another so that they could finally get him to a med pool with a lifting floor. Her heart was racing. She didn’t know whether Dawn was dead or alive.
The trainers were able to move Tilikum into a med pool, but it was one without a lifting floor, and so they had to move him on through the linked pools. As she later told a detective of the Orlando sheriff’s office in a taped conversation that has been made public, “My first thought was I was very mad that we didn’t have that lift station because of this animal we know he’s killed two other people.” At that point, she still didn’t know if Dawn was dead. She was still in Tilikum’s jaws. Laura began to pray about what to do next.
Laura saw a Shamu supervisor, Jenny Mairot, being comforted by her husband. She walked over to hug Jenny, who said, “She’s gone, Laura. She’s gone.” At that point, Laura turned and thought for a moment. Another trainer then said, “It seems as though we’re exacerbating it.” Laura agreed. “Yes, you’re right. Let’s just calm down. I will get to Kelly.”
She asked Kelly Flaherty-Clark, SeaWorld Orlando’s curator of Animal Training, if she could tell everyone to back off. “She’s already gone and we don’t want him to mangle her body.” She wanted to preserve the dignity of the friend she loved.
After Clark ordered the rescuers off, Tilikum appeared to relax a bit. Laura then went into the locker room, removed her street clothes and put on a wetsuit. “I had made the decision,” she later told a detective of the Orlando sheriff’s office in the taped conversation. “I’m getting that body. I’m getting my friend.” Her advantage was her years-long relationship with Tilikum. “He knows me,” she told the detective.
The orca was finally at a pool with a lift station, and Laura waited for the floor to lift him up, essentially beaching him. She stepped onto the platform and made eye contact with the whale who had her friend in his mouth, shaking the body back and forth. She looked at Tilikum again, right into his eyes, and said in a strong voice, “It’s alright, baby. Settle down.” She knelt and cradled Dawn’s torso while Tilikum still had her in his jaws. “It’s alright. Let go,” she told him. “Let go.” Tilikum seemed to be responding.
The rescuers were once again trying to get a net over Tilikum’s head. They had already draped one over his body. “He almost let her go,” Laura told them. “Just tuck it around his rostrum and he’ll let go.” They did and she was able to extricate her friend.
She now focused all her attention on Dawn, looking at her face and bringing the body to a place where no one could gawk as they cut the wetsuit away and tried in vain to use the defibrillator to bring her back. The rescuers realized that Dawn’s left arm had been torn off but managed to reopen Tilikum’s mouth to retrieve it. Dawn’s “sister ring”—identical to the one she shared with Laura—was on the hand of that arm.
After calling Dawn’s husband, Scott, with the news, Laura tried to help Kelly Flaherty-Clark move Tilikum from the med pool to isolate him in a back pool once the mechanical lift was lowered. Still in her wetsuit, Laura took a bucket of fish and tried to convince the orca to move into another pool. He appeared to be responding to some of her signals. “Good boy, okay, you ready?” she asked. She slapped the water on the far side to try to get him to move; he looked as if he might. But, ultimately, he refused to leave the med pool area. Laura said it was because he could see that Dawn was still nearby, her body covered in a black blanket only a few feet away from Tilikum on the other side of the wall. “He knew she was there,” she told the detective on tape. “That was his possession. Don’t try to take that away.”
The best trainers know there are no moral equivalencies between humans and orcas. Like Laura Surovik, they give the whales the proper respect and space to be whales under the duress of captivity. Good trainers are sensitive to the subtle danger of anthropomorphizing: while humans and orcas may share the same feelings, killer whales do not think like human beings.
There is another factor to consider. The world was surprised by the gentleness of orcas when they were first captured and displayed in aquariums in the 1960s. But the ensuing decades of industrial-strength marine park isolation has most likely skewed the way orcas look at people—through the painful prism of imprisonment. Whatever remains of that gentleness with human beings—never their prey in the seas—must now be thrown into the social calculus of prisoner and jail-keeper. The repetition and boredom, the lack of freedom to move, the tiny two-legged creatures that control the food supply—all that is like nothing the whales would have had to deal with in the wild. They are no longer really orcas but mutants, genetically killer whales but made up of warped psychologies.
With its careful documentation of virtually every interaction between trainers and whales, SeaWorld is—within the organization—cognizant of the complex relationship between humans and orcas. Yet through the years, its attempts at damage control—not just the way it spun Dawn’s death—have failed to explain the difficult reality of captivity to the public. Instead, the script always ends up proclaiming that the whale is never really wrong. That simplistic perspective is a disgusting disservice to the trainers who love the whales and risk their bodies every day to work with them.
After Dawn died, SeaWorld said it was because she had made the mistake of letting her ponytail touch the water, inadvertently attracting Tilikum’s attention. After Ale
xis died, the official line was that he panicked and drowned. Loro Parque—which is supervised by SeaWorld—issued a statement reading in part, “This was an unfortunate accident . . . The study of the facts shows that the animal’s behavior did not correspond to the way in which these marine mammals attack their prey in the wild, but was rather a shifting of position.” This statement made it sound as if Alexis just happened to drown in the pool after he was accidentally bumped by the whale; in contrast, the official autopsy report described the incident as a “violent death” and listed Alexis’ injuries as multiple cuts and bruises, the collapse of both lungs, fractures of the ribs and sternum, a lacerated liver, severely damaged vital organs and puncture marks consistent with an orca’s teeth.
SeaWorld spins its stories this way to minimize the damage to the corporation and to manage the commercial image of the orca. While acknowledging that the killer whale can be dangerous, SeaWorld keeps the risk within the realm of public acceptability. It would not be advisable—from a business point of view—to admit that a combination of behavioral strictures and cramped quarters have deformed the natural character of the orcas and made them riskier for trainers to deal with.
Trainers instinctively know that reforming SeaWorld potentially means changing the nature of their jobs—and the threat that a new SeaWorld would dispense with them altogether. Certainly that would happen if SeaWorld ceased to exist. That anxiety works in the company’s favor. Whenever an incident of aggression hits the news, SeaWorld can usually count on the affected trainer to support the way the company wants the public to understand the story. I don’t blame anyone for sticking with the company line. I too was a loyal corporate citizen and felt I had to do my duty to defend SeaWorld against those who might hurt it—and the whales.
In 2004 at SeaWorld San Antonio, trainer Steve Aibel was involved in a major waterwork aggression incident with Kyquot, Tilikum’s son, who was 12 years old at the time. As in the other incidents I’ve described in this book, Ky had refused a signal for a behavior from Steve, who had known the orca since the whale was two years old. At first, Ky refused to give Steve a rocket-hop; but after he did, he repeatedly swam over Steve, making it impossible for the trainer to leave the pool for several minutes. Aibel was isolated in the center of the pool as Ky went at him again and again, rolling over and under him. At one point, Steve, sounding panicked, told another trainer to “Get me out of here.” Fortunately, a trainer was able to yank Steve from the pool. He emerged uninjured and would go on national television with a smile to explain the situation as “no big deal,” saying that the young whale was just rambunctious because his hormones were kicking in.
Beneath the Surface: Killer Whales, SeaWorld, and the Truth Beyond Blackfish Page 19