BlackFish

Last night I watched a documentary called “Blackfish” about an Orca Killer Whale called Tilikum who is “held captive” in Orlando’s Sea World. This is very eye opening and has changed my views about SeaWorld which I will boycott would encourage others to do the same and educate themselves by watching this documentary and reading more about this. 

 

Millions of visitors say watching orca Tilikum performing his amazing tricks with trainers was the highlight of many trips to SeaWorld Orlando. Yet few would know the predator was a killer of people, thought to be responsible for the deaths of two trainers and a drifter.

Since the last fatality, in 2010, trainers have been stopped going into the water with the orcas. But now SeaWorld is trying to overturn the ban.

Tilikum’s chilling tale is told in Blackfish, a new film that compiles evidence about incidents in the SeaWorld parks from trainers, experts and witnesses to some of the deaths. Ex-SeaWorld trainer Sam Berg, now 45, said: “There has not been a single incident of killer whales harming humans in the wild."In captivity, it’s happened more than 70 times.” She added: “Tilikum is not an evil animal – he is a highly intelligent, emotionally complex mammal. And we’ve made him psychotic.”

Tilikum was captured as a two-year-old calf by hunters off Iceland in 1983 and sold to Sealand of the Pacific in Canada. Instead of swimming 100 miles a day in the ocean with the rest of his pod, Tilikum was kept in a small pool with two unrelated, bullying females. Blackfish claims they repeatedly injured him and trainers deprived Tilikum of food if he did not do a trick properly. In 1991, Tilikum grabbed trainer Keltie Byrne, 20, from the poolside and drowned her, say witnesses.   At the time it was claimed she tripped, fell in and died of hypothermia.

 

Then when Iceland declined the chance to put Tilikum back in the wild, fearing he may be diseased, SeaWorld eagerly took him for their breeding programme. Sam said: “Tilikum was available and they jumped at it. They needed a breeder to make more killer whales to sell and bring in the crowds. "I don’t think anyone stopped to wonder if it was a good idea.”  Sam said staff were told that Keltie had fallen in and died and that Tilikum, not used to stimulation, thought her body was a toy.

In 1999 the naked and badly mauled body of drifter Daniel Dukes, 27, was found on Tilikum’s back as he swam around his pool one morning. The official line was this guy had jumped in and died and Tilikum just played with the body. There should have been several people there overnight and camera footage but, magically, there was no evidence.”

The most shocking death was that of experienced trainer Dawn Brancheau, 40, in front of an audience in February 2010. She was lying next to Tilikum in a shallow part of the pool when he grabbed her in his teeth. Hundreds of people saw Dawn having her arm chewed off, being scalped and her breast bone snapped in two. Even after she died the huge beast continued to bite and toy with her body.  At first a SeaWorld spokesmen said Dawn’s ponytail had distracted Tilikum, then it was her own fault – she got too close.

 

 

Tilikum, now separate from other whales, spends long periods just floating in his pool. He has lost many of the teeth in his lower jaw from biting on metal gates and needs daily vet checks to flush out dead fish from the gaping holes left in his gums. Sam said he cannot be released or even rehomed but says it is not too late for a boycott of SeaWorld to make a difference for the rest of its 28 killer whales.

But Will Travers, of the Born Free Foundation, said: “It simply can’t be right. Massive, intelligent, highly social marine mammals, many caught from the wild, locked up for life for our so-called ‘entertainment’. “Blackfish tells it like it is and should spell the end of this form of wild animal exploitation.”