Yesterday in Orlando, Florida, at Sea World, the big male killer whale, or orca, named Tilikum, killed his trainer, 40-year-old Dawn Brancheau, who had worked at Sea World since 1994. Brancheau was petting Tilikum when he grabbed her by the pony tail and pulled her into the water, refusing to let her go. Sea World closed off the area as soon as the accident became apparent.

    This is an awful tragedy for the trainer and her family. Sea World will have insurance and the payouts will be huge. Sea World, in its very short initial statement said that this had never happened before. But this is not the first accident like this to happen at Sea World and other parks, nor will it be the last. Tilikum, the whale responsible, had in fact been part of a group of three killer whales who killed a trainer at Sealand of the Pacific in Victoria, BC, Canada in 1991 before he was acquired by Sea World. Then, in 1999, he killed a member of the public who slipped into his pool at night. Those facts are well known. What is less well known is that serious, sometimes near fatal accidents have been happening at Sea World from time to time in the park’s nearly 50-year history. In some cases, there were big payouts to keep the details quiet, but some trainers have been willing to talk. I reported on these accidents in my book Orca: The Whale Called Killer and in a WDCS report The Performing Orca. The fact is that orcas are too big, too social, too wild to be kept in captivity.

    One thing I worry about is that these sorts of events attract even more people to Sea World and that the tragedy will be blamed on Tilikum, saying that he is an aggressive older male, and that he has this history of having been involved in the death of two other people. Sea World or others may try to say that it is this one older male whale's fault. But some accidents have been caused by captive females and younger males, although they do tend to be animals that have been in Sea World for some years. As I wrote in Orca: The Whale Called Killer, trainers say that orcas start to get bored and go a bit crazy after a few years in captivity. Sea World highlights its in-water work with orcas, riding on them and doing death-defying tricks, but others including myself have highlighted concerns.

    Try to imagine a highly intelligent social mammal and a big predator that travels 100 kms or more a day, being taken from its family, stripped of its ability to socialize normally, unable to hunt and unable to do much more than pace or circle a concrete pool. What it has left is its relationship to the trainer, but how long can that really keep them interested? It may not be surprising that an animal starved of company and stimulation will try to hold a trainer in the water...even to the point of drowning them.

    This is the fourth person to have been killed by captive orcas. By contrast, there is no documented case of a wild orca ever killing a human. We DO know how to correct this situation, however. Stop exhibiting orcas as circus acts. My hope is that the payouts and the subsequent insurance costs for Sea World are such that the practice of keeping them captive is relegated to a mid-20th Century curiosity. Unfortunately for the whales currently in captivity, and for the trainers who will lose their livelihoods if not their lives, this sad saga goes on.