After trainer Dawn Brancheau was killed in 2010 when she was grabbed by killer whale Tilikum, OSHA investigated her death and recommended SeaWorld pull all trainers out of the water, advising the park have trainers interact with killer whales through a protective barrier or from a safe distance.
SeaWorld apparently did not see it that way, and the killer whale shows have continued as before, only now the trainers do not perform any water work with the orcas. This of course saves trainers from being attacked but does nothing to relieve orcas from the frustrations and anxieties of incarceration.
The whales could be way to unpredictable, and there was no way of ensuring the safety of the trainers. SeaWorld would do things to help ensure the trainers safety, such as specially designed vests, and a rising floor, but the decision would stay. It was just too dangerous.
SeaWorld trainers were forbidden from swimming with Tilikum, as they often did with the resort's seven other orcas. Only about a dozen of 28 handlers, including Brancheau, had been specifically trained to work with him from the edge of SeaWorld's pools.
In 2016, SeaWorld announced that we were ending our killer whale breeding program and that the orcas in our care are the last generation at our park.
SeaWorld finally acknowledged the significant shift in public opinion on orca captivity and made its historic announcement that the current generation of orcas at SeaWorld will be its last. A combination of relentless protests, canceled corporate sponsorships, and celebrity outcry led to the landmark decision.
It is not certain what happened but SeaWorld said at the time that Dukes had climbed into the pool and drowned. However, animal rights activists and a coroner's report noted his body had been mutilated by the whale.
Confined to an enclosure that was, to him, the size of a bathtub, he slowly lost his mind. Finally, his body gave out as well. Tilikum died in an artificial environment where he did not belong. He never again felt the waves and tides or knew the joy of swimming with his family and exploring the vast ocean.
Tilikum thus found himself subjected to a wholly unnatural level of violence, from which there was no escape. Ken Balcomb, who has spent four decades studying killer whales, told me that locking Tilikum in the box for 14 hours a day with whales who were hostile to him, “probably led to psychosis.”
Tilikum was only 2 years old when he was captured from the ocean in 1983. He hasn't seen his family or home since. Frustrated by his confinement and lack of autonomy, he has killed three people, including trainer Dawn Brancheau—and as punishment for her death, he was kept in solitary confinement for a year.
Blackfish tells the story of Tilikum, the homicidal killer whale, and his most recent victim, Dawn Brancheau, the SeaWorld trainer he crushed, dismembered, and partially swallowed in 2010. The film is an indictment of SeaWorld, its safety practices, its animal husbandry, its mendacity, and its whole reason for being.
On February 24, 2010, Tilikum killed Dawn Brancheau, a 40-year-old SeaWorld trainer. Brancheau was killed following a Dine with Shamu show. The veteran trainer was rubbing Tilikum as part of a post-show routine when the orca grabbed her by her ponytail and pulled her into the water.
See how we care for our dolphins, participate in a training session, then touch a dolphin on this program. Located at Dolphin Cove®, you and your family can meet the trainers to learn about the world-class care that these animals receive and how they communicate.
In the wild, there have been no reliably verified fatal attacks on humans. In captivity, there have been several non-fatal and four fatal attacks on humans since the 1970s. Experts are divided as to whether the injuries and deaths were accidental or deliberate attempts to cause harm.
Is it safe to swim or dive with Orcas? Yes, however, you have to be very cautious, because they are still wild animals and need attention all the time. Orcas owe their name “killer whale” to the early whalers Because they apparently attacked and killed all other animals, even the largest whales.
Shamu /ʃæmuː/ (unknown – August 16, 1971) was a female orca captured in October 1965 from a southern resident pod. She was sold to SeaWorld San Diego and became a star attraction. Shamu was the fourth orca ever captured, and the second female. She died in August 1971, after about six years of captivity.
Following Dawn's death, Tilikum was sent to spend most of his days in a pool rarely seen by the public. There are reports that he would spend hours on end just lying on the surface of the water.
Dawn Therese Brancheau (née LoVerde, April 16, 1969 – February 24, 2010) was an American animal trainer at SeaWorld. She worked with orcas at SeaWorld Orlando for fifteen years, including a leading role in revamping the Shamu show, and was SeaWorld's poster girl. She was killed by an orca, Tilikum.
Over the course of 30 years in captivity, Tilikum killed three people, including two trainers, and a man who climbed into his tank naked after the park had closed.
“Tilikum is basically psychotic,” the marine biologist Ken Balcomb told Outside Online in 2010. “He has been maintained in a situation where I think he is psychologically unrecoverable in terms of being a wild whale.”
Brancheau's family and animal rights activists say they do not want to see Tillikum killed. Brancheau's sister, Diane Gross, told The Associated Press that the trainer loved the animals like they were her children and "would not want anything done to that whale."
Tilikum was estimated to be about 36 years old at the time of his death. He was brought to SeaWorld after Canada's Sealand of the Pacific closed in 1992.
Tilikum. Every “Shamu” at SeaWorld had a tragic story. And one of those stories resonated with people around the world when it was chronicled in the groundbreaking documentary Blackfish, which told the truth about a “Shamu” whose actual name was Tilikum.
SeaWorld is said to have Tilikum insured for as much as $5 million, and Ventre said, "He's worth millions, and he represents the future of the breeding program for SeaWorld.
SeaWorld officials say Tilikum, the orca that killed a trainer at the company's Orlando park, died from bacterial pneumonia. SeaWorld spokeswoman Aimée Jeansonne Becka announced the results of a necropsy in an email Friday. Tilikum had been receiving treatment for a persistent bacterial infection when he died Jan.