This article discusses killer whales and their trainers. One of the whales discussed, Tilikum, was at a park in Canada, but now lives at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida. Recently, a documentary called "Blackfish" about the abuse of orcas in captivity was released. The main target of this film was SeaWorld, in an attempt to spark reform in the treatment of animals in parks like it. In 1991, at the Sealand of the Pacific in Victoria, a trainer named Keltie Byrne slipped into the orca tank, and when other people tried to pull her out, one of the whales grabbed her foot and pulled her under. She drowned, and was known as the first case in which a human was killed by an orca. There were three whales there at the time, but Tilikum, the male, is well known for dragging his later SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau under the water, causing her death. Tilikum was associated with another death, that of a man named Daniel Dukes who was found lying across the orca's back after he had somehow stayed in the park after it closed. In contrast, the man who trained Tilikum trained Keiko, the star of the movie "Free Willy". This whale was found in a sickly condition at a run down aquarium in Mexico City. There were no problems with this orca, and the crew started a campaign to set him free. However he later died, probably because of the poor conditions he lived in before the movie crew found him.
It seems that neither of our species benefits from the captivity of killer whales. I can't really judge whether the whales should be released, but I hope that no more animals are abused. The whales did not seem to be acting violently purposely in any of these events, and it is possible that they were simply trying to play with their trainers. In fact, the whales attempted to keep Keltie Byrne above the surface when she became unresponsive. It seemed as if they knew she was in trouble, but by then it was too late.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/26/world/americas/orca-trainer-tilikum-keiko/index.html?hpt=us_c2
This is a really difficult subject to get into and I think that's because, well, people have died interacting with these creatures but also because there is a lot of evidence backing up the idea that orcas don't mean to hurt their trainers and perhaps underestimate their awesome strength. I mean, we're dealing with huge, intelligent animals. So huge and dependent on social interactions that I think there's really no good way to hold them in captivity. No matter how big a tank you make them, the sea is really the only proper environment, as they are migratory animals by nature. And no matter how close to their trainer they are, accidents like this are still going to happen. As I recall, wasn't Tilikum pretty close to Dawn while they were working together? Really...they just aren't meant to live like this, in my opinion and I think they have definitely been exploited to hell by organizations like SeaWorld. Oh geez and now that I've mentioned exploitation I wanna get into a big rant regarding Keiko and his treatment but I think it's pretty self-explanatory if you do your research.
ReplyDelete