6:56 Minute Video Before Whale Kill. Trainer was IN THE WATER with Whale [SeaWorld]

WESH TV ^ | 02/25/10

[BunnySlippers]

I found this video VERY interesting. It now becomes apparent that despite what SeaWorld says the trainer DID get into the water with the Orca. They have denied this happened. And they claim it is against policy. She is smiling widely.

The video ends seconds before he grabs her.

Some news sources have a still of the trainer in the water with the killer whale ... but now the video.

I know many will not agree with me, but I think it is barbaric to treat animals like this.

http://www.wesh.com/video/22671481/index.html

[BunnySlippers]

But they do not allow the trainers in with Tilikum who is a bull Orca, segregated from the others. He’s twice as big and had killed two.

[Ramius]

Nope... I haven’t seen any video or pics from the actual event. But all of the the reports of witnesses say that she was standing next to the pool and Tilly grabbed her and dragged her into the pool. I don’t know anything beyond that.

[BunnySlippers]

Sheesh!

[Ramius]

Sheesh what? I’m just relaying what I know. If I’m wrong I’m happy to admit it. I’ve already heard enough differing versions of this story to make me skeptical of everything I’ve heard so far.

[Mad Dawgg]

"But they do not allow the trainers in with Tilikum who is a bull Orca..."

So apparently this trainer didn't get the memo?

[bd476]

[Frantzie]

Whatever. I never said it cared about Bush or Hussein. It should not be confined in a small area to amuse a bunch of fat as*es eating ice cream trying to project human behavior on wild animals. Elephants are smarter than most people and they don’t liked being ahined for some sh*t circus owned by that creep Feld or other circus creeps.

I almost puked when I read the UK Telegraph tonight which gets a jump on the US news and is a great paper.

The woman’s ponytail is being blamed. The PR spin is in full force to protect the money making machine. Reminds me of the Tiger Woods or Michael Jackson PR machines.

Let the animals go.

[GovernmentShrinker]

I don’t think it’s “barbaric” to treat whales the way SeaWorld does. However, if you read up on the life history of this particular whale, and the circumstances of his captivity at his previous location (where he also killed a trainer), THAT was barbaric, and likely did serious and permanent psychological damage to this whale. He and the two females at that Canadian facility were forced to spend 14 hours a day (including overnight) in a tiny tank they could barely turn around in. They repeatedly suffered injuries from scraping against the sides of the tiny tank. And if they refused to to go into the claustrophobic tank when ordered, they were deprived of their evening meal as punishment. IIRC, after Tillikum killed a trainer there, a court got involved and the facility was forced to stop using the tiny confinement tank. The facility was finally shut down when the licensing authority declined to renew its license, and that’s when Tillikum got sold to Sea World. The sorry excuses for humans who kept forcing them into that tiny tank should have been locked in a tiny dark closet together for several years as punishment, and deprived of food if they complained about it.

[blackbart.223]

"Bingo. I'm always surprised when people are surprised that a wild animal acts like a wild animal. The anthropomorphizing of animals that's been going on for 50 years has done a number on us. Too many people assign human feelings, thought processes and motivations to animals when trying to understand their behavior. They shouldn't."

You said this better than I could have. I'll leave you with this. If you twist the dragon's tail you may at some point get burned.

[GovernmentShrinker]

I don’t think SeaWorld ever denied she had been in the water with him earlier — she’s frequently in the water with him, since SeaWorld’s shows always involve trainers in the water with the whales. The debate was whether he attacked her after she slipped/fell into the water with him (she’d been standing at the edge of the pool at some point after getting out of it), or whether he grabbed her off the side of the pool. It seems the confusion has been laid to rest, and that was in shallow water next to the whale, and he grabbed her by her ponytail and pulled her underwater. Basically the same as the original “he grabbed her” version, except that she was already in shallow water. The version that said she slipped and fell in (whether from outside the pool, or from the shallow section to the deeper section) has apparently been dismissed. Probably different people saw it from different angles, and those who were looking at the front of her couldn’t see that it was having her ponytail grabbed that pulled her underwater — probably looked like she lost her balance when the whale bumped up against her.

[Ramius]

Let the animals go.

So they can die like the last captive whale that was released. Yay us! Woohoo!

[bd476]

This is another screen grab taken from a video taken after the official show was over, and moments before the trainer lost her life.

In the video it appears that the trainer was having fun, she was all smiles and she appeared to be very relaxed, and very accustomed to being in the water with the whale.



It's heartbreaking thinking of how her family must feel. Yet it is also heartbreaking thinking of how the Orcas have been treated while captive.

A few years ago I took my family to Sea World San Diego. As we left after the show there were peep holes in the wooden fence where you could look through to see the Orcas. I assumed the Orcas were in another tank but suddenly had an eerie feeling we were being stared at.

There looking through the peephole was a gigantic eye looking right at me. I saw what I perceived as a great deal of intelligence. It still haunts me.

[Persevero]

I think it’s barbaric to treat people like this!

[SWAMPSNIPER]

That critter is a lot smarter than any reptile and a lot more lethal.

[GovernmentShrinker]

I sort of doubt there will be a lawsuit. The trainer’s family is probably not inclined to sue — they knew she loved what she was doing, and knew that she appreciated the danger. Very different situation from the 20 year old, obviously inexperienced and not very mature trainer this whale previously killed, in a very different facility.

[TNdandelion]

That was my understanding as well. Clearly, she was in the water with the whale.

I happen to agree somewhat with the OP. But once you've made an animal dependent on humans, there's not hope returning it to the wild. "Free Willy" being an excellent example.

[pennyfarmer]

I was really hoping that they would be serving KW steaks to order.

[GovernmentShrinker]

Personally, looking at the video, two things struck me. First, that whale appeared quite relaxed and happy interacting with the trainer — no sign of aggression or confusion at all. Second, she’d been playfully tossing fish into his mouth and in some cases actually putting fish into his mouth directly, so right up next to him, inviting him to take and eat the fish. And there she is, with her very fish-like ponytail flipping around like a fish . . .

I seriously think the whale may have mistaken her ponytail for a fish. And then in a split second she was in his mouth, in deep water, and no doubt thrashing around panicking, and the whale was utterly confused.

Being a complete layperson playing backseat driver here, if I was asked to recommend changes for SeaWorld’s whale-safety policies, I’d start by banning ponytails or any uncapped hair long or loose enough to resemble a tasty fish snack. And second, (after consulting with experts to make sure there isn’t a really solid psychological/behavioral reason they’re doing this), I’d ban trainers from dressing up to look like little orcas! Orcas have instincts, and their instincts tell them that black and white creatures swimming/splashing around next to them are other WHALES. They may be trained to understand otherwise when they’re really thinking about it, but in an unexpected and confusing situation, they’ll quickly revert to relying on instinct.

After this whale killed another trainer many years ago, people who know and work with these creatures said they really thought he didn’t realize she couldn’t stay underwater that long without breathing. She apparently had no sign of deliberately inflicted injuries — just one set of relatively minor bite marks from being held in his mouth — and had some abrasions from being dragged along the bottom of the pool, but the cause of death was drowning, not injuries inflicted by the massive whale. At that facility, trainers were never allowed to get in the water with the whales, and up until that point, there hadn’t been any specific training for them on dealing with things that fell into their pool. In that incident, the trainer did slip/fall into the pool, and the whale apparently just grabbed the interesting new object, because he had no reason to think that wasn’t a good idea. Subsequently they started doing some “desensitization” training, to train the whales to ignore things that fell into the pool.

[GovernmentShrinker]

Per this CNN story http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/02/25/florida.seaworld.death/index.html?hpt=T1 SeaWorld’s spokesman and the sheriff’s office are saying the same thing about how it happened.

“Dawn Brancheau, 40, was “pulled underwater for an extended period of time,” by the whale, Chuck Tompkins, SeaWorld’s curator of zoological operations, told CNN’s “American Morning.”
The county medical examiner ruled Brancheau “most likely died from multiple traumatic injuries and drowning after one of the park’s killer whales pulled her into a pool behind Shamu Stadium,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
The statement confirms Tompkins’ account, saying that Brancheau was interacting with the whale, named Tilikum, in knee-deep water “when the animal grabbed her by the hair, said to be in a long ponytail, and pulled her underwater.”

The confusion appears to stem from the fact that there’s a shelf around the edge of the pool where the trainers can stand in shallow water connected to the deeper pool where the whales swim. From the viewing area below, people can only see the glass side of the deep pool, so to them it would have appeared that she wasn’t in the water one second, and the next second she was underwater in the whale’s mouth, so appeared to have been pulled in from outside the pool. And as I said earlier, for people on the upper level, depending on their vantage point, some probably couldn’t see that her ponytail had been grabbed, and thus interpreted her move from standing on the shallow shelf to being in the deep water as having “slipped” into the deep pool.

I think SeaWorld’s policy re Tillikum is not to have trainers swimming around in the deep pool with him. Obviously they routinely and openly have trainers standing in the water on the shallow shelf right next to him. It would be reasonable to regard that as much safer, since an experienced trainer (and this one was 40 years old) would likely recognize early warning signs that a whale was starting to be aggressive, and be able to to walk out of the shallow area at the edge a heck of a lot more easily than getting out of the middle of the deep pool.

[Talisker]

I think your thoughts about the harmful psychological effects of being forced into a small tank, the ponytail that could have been mistaken for fish, and the orca-patterned swim suits are very inisghtful - I don’t see how these issues could be dismissed in any investigation. I presume the trainer dealt somewhat with the effects of the first issue... the death may simply be an accident because of the ponytail mistake. Which might also mean that the orca is now grieving over the death of the trainer.

There are extremely small 5 or 10 minute air tanks trainers could wear that would hardly be noticeable - these might, in an emergency, enable a trainer to survive long enough for the whale to realize it’s mistake and finally let go. Just a thought.