Also from this CNN article, it says that in the show just preceding this fatal attack, the trainers were having trouble getting the whales (plural) to obey their commands and one of the trainers even made a joking announcement to the crowd about it. I expect this will be a key point in the promised review of procedures that SeaWorld will be undertaking. When the whales aren’t reacting to their trainers the way they normally do, this should be a huge warning sign to stop the show, get the trainers on high alert, and cautiously investigate the cause.
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We were at Sea World in San Diego last summer and just such an incident occurred - the whales came out and were not responding to the beginning commands.
Less than 5 minutes after they realized the whales were not responding correctly to their commands, they cancelled that show & asked everyone to leave the Shamu stadium. I got the distinct impression from what they said that it was maybe mating season.
So they are careful about it. Or were when we were there.
That was San Diego SeaWorld, and this fatality happened at the Orlando SeaWorld. There may well be different “cultures” at the different facilities. Though I expect they have the same policies on paper, the actual carrying out of concepts like “careful” can vary tremendously depending on the individuals involved and the attitude of the manager in charge of the facilities.