Have we taken the captivity of wild mammals for granted?
It was sad and shocking to hear an experienced Sea World trainer was killed Wednesday in Florida by the 12,300-pound killer whale she cared for on a daily basis. Video images before the tragedy showed what appeared to be a reciprocal loving relationship between human and mammal.
We in the Puget Sound area have come to know our resident orcas as gentle giants that have been misnamed. Yet, orcas are wild animals, who like humans, have inbred needs, and live in close, socially bonded pods. Humans call their clans families and many suffer mental problems, sometimes insanity, when kept from the people they love. Maybe whales suffer the same fate.
The large male orca, named Tillikum, had been in captivity for 27 years. He was taken from his home pod in Iceland waters in 1983. Although he may have appeared to be bonded with his 40-year-old trainer, Dawn Brancheau, it was an unnatural liaison most humans fail to remember. Many of us grew up visiting Sea World and have come to accept marine parks with its live mammal shows as we have zoos.
When it comes down to it, captivity of wild animals is dangerous. Every living creature just wants its freedom to roam, swim, fly or crawl.
Tillikum had displayed dissatisfaction to his confinement fatally twice before last week’s attack. One was after the deadly encounter on another trainer at Sealand of the Pacific in Canada in 1991, when a 20-year-old trainer slipped and fell into the whale pool and was drowned. Tillikum was then sold to Orlando Sea World, primarily as its breeding male. The second death occurred after a man climbed the fence into Sea World after it closed one evening and was found dead in Tillikum’s pool the next morning.
Granted, Tillikum is a valuable asset since capturing orcas from the wild is no longer legal. But how many more people have to be killed before Seaworld puts the cost of human life above that of a mammal who, according to the Orca Network, “should be given the chance to retire to an ocean sea pen in his home waters of Iceland to live out the rest of his life?” I agree.
Sea parks can still educate visitors on the vast amount of creatures living within our oceans in fun ways without confining mammals, such as killer whales, to pools one-billionth the size of their natural environments.
–Kelly Ruhoff
Editor
