Killers

Killers

   They've been in the news a lot, these killers.  Captured, confined, often depressed, they are forced into submission, some even giving birth; but all are now far removed from the environment they once knew...and there's a growing movement to set them free.

   Orcas (often termed Killer whales) are the largest members of the dolphin family, and the more they are studied, the more their intelligence appears to be equal to or surpassed that of the common dolphin.  With a fifteen-pound brain, orcas are the great whites of the oceans, moving thousands of miles and nesting comfortably among the top predators of the seas, traveling in family pods, highly social, and living well into their 80s.  But once captured, they dorsal fin drops, their all-important sound communication bounces off walls, their travel is limited to several small concrete tanks, and occasionally, they kill one another (or a trainer), something that doesn't appear to happen in the wild.

   This became the backdrop for the controversial film, Blackfish which showed baby orcas being separated and removed from their mother in the wild (the practice has been banned since 1972 in the U.S. and most entertainment-bred orcas are born in captivity, itself controversial since the birthing schedule is pushed up from a normal 15 years to that of 8).  But when the CEO of Sea World, Jim Atchison told Bloomberg Businessweek this about his company's brand (“Our killer whales, our killer whale program, and all of our animals are emblematic of the whole brand.  I have to protect our brand. I have to grow our brand.  How we care for those animals may make me feel good morally, but that is also my fiduciary responsibility.”), the result was reflective of a growing movement away from watching such "entertainment."  On Nov. 12 the company reported a 28 percent drop in profit and a 5.2 percent drop in attendance, to 8.3 million, in the three months ended Sept. 30.  It also announced a $50 million cost-cutting measure.  For SeaWorld, whose logo features an orca’s dorsal fin, Blackfish has gone from being a public relations problem to a potentially catastrophic threat to a $1.4 billion-a-year business.

   But there's another problem for the 300 sea-life parks and the nearly 60 killer whales held in captivity...releasing them back into the wild has never been accomplished (indeed, National Geographic just told the story of the first apparently successful release of a pair of dolphins, not orcas, back into the wild from a park in South Korea...some 3 dozen others had been released over the years but their end result has been inconclusive at best).  And the training is rather extensive (National Geographic also had an interview with Bridgett Pirtle, a former trainer with Sea World, giving you an idea of what a trainer of sea animal shows goes through). 

   But another view emerged from former senior trainer John Hargrove when he wrote his own book, Beneath the Surface, telling NPR's Dave Davies, We trick the whales when there's a separation like that. The whales are so smart they know that even if they hear the cranes coming up the pathway [to lift them out of the pool] or certainly if they see them, they won't separate, they won't allow it to happen because they know the possibility...that one of the members of their family or their social group could be taken away from them. You'll [hear] extremely upset vocalizations from whales that are being taken away, and then the whales that they're being taken away from.  In fact, [when calf Takara was taken from Kasatka], she was emitting vocalizations that had never been heard before ever by anyone.  They brought in one of their own SeaWorld researchers...she analyzed those vocals and determined that they were long-range vocals and because obviously Takara was gone and [Kasatka] was trying anything she could to try to locate and communicate with Takara, which is absolutely heartbreaking.  Those vocalizations continued on for a long time.  This information was communicated to me by a senior manager from Shamu Stadium at SeaWorld of California, so obviously that was their determination of their vocalizations, which was communicated to me, rightfully so, so there's no real gray area for any misinterpretation of what those vocalizations might have meant.  Everyone clearly understood that it was an extremely traumatic event for both Kasatka and Takara.  In the same interview, Sea World spokesperson, Chuck Tompkins said, [Hargrove's] interpretation of the environment is completely different from mine or any other trainer that was there.  These animals are very vocal and anytime you're doing something different in the environment, these animals can become vocal.  Never during these situations have we heard those types of vocals that would indicate stress or anything of that nature, or we wouldn't continue with the process.

   In addition, the U.S. Navy made concentrated efforts to deploy sound blasts throughout the oceans (oil companies are also expanding their efforts at this), blasts which the Sierra Club lists as "100,000 times louder than a jet engine...every 10 seconds, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week."  A federal judge recently ruled against the five-year Navy plan to do testing off of Hawaii and the coast of California (the oil companies are attempting to do their testing the water of the Atlantic).  For the highly social orca (and other sea mammals dependent on sonar communication), such testing would have proved devastating to their body systems (see my earlier post on new studies of blast effects on soldiers).  

   Said Hargrove in his book, By the time I ended my orca training career in 2012, I was one of the most experienced orca trainers on the planet...I worked with 20 different whales, swimming with 17 of them across two decades.  Most are still alive.  I loved those charismatic and complex beings.  I can't quite call them animals; the whales are beings just as we are beings.  And these orcas have been a more intimate part of my life than most humans.  Dr. Ingrid Visser, who has spent many years studying the killer whales of New Zealand, told me, "If you have a question about orcas, frame it as if you were asking about people."  The answer, she said, would often be surprisingly similar...I am not a scientist and, while this book will delve into the natural history of killer whales--into how they live in the wild--my story involves the lives of orcas seen through the eyes of the men and women who trained them to perform at SeaWorld.  We swam with them.  We kept them healthy.  We saw them give birth.  We watched them suffer.  We suffered with them.  We looked them in the eye and caught a glimpse into their souls.  Sometimes, we saw joy.  Sometimes, we saw things that were terrifying...I want you to know what I have learned so we can save them together.