The death of Dawn Brancheau, erstwhile trainer of Tillikum the Killer Whale, at Sea World on February 24, 2010 prompted a great deal of outrage on both sides of the question regarding wild animals performing in captivity, in particular killer whales. People wondered how an animal obviously beloved by its trainer could turn on her so unpredictably. According to her sister, Diane Gross, Dawn was living her dream and would never want any harm to come to the animal. She loved working with him.
Tillikum had in fact been implicated in the deaths of two other people prior to this incident, but Chuck Tompkins, head of animal training at all SeaWorld parks, in an interview with the CBS Early Show stated, “There wasn't anything to indicate to us that there was a problem.” Oh really? While with Sealand of the Pacific in British Columbia, a trainer drowned in his enclosure, before he was sold as a breeding animal to Sea World in Orlando, Florida. Then in 1999 a man, who snuck into the facility during the night, was found dead of hypothermia in Tillicum’s tank one morning. There was no sign the whale actually killed him, though he did have bumps and bruises on his body. Neither of these deaths may have been “his fault”, but due to his blemished history, only a dozen of Sea World’s 29 trainers were allowed to work with him, and none were supposed to be in the water with him.
Remember Keiko? The killer whale who starred in the 1993 Warner Brothers movies Free Willy? The original movie was a blockbuster and was followed by Free Willy 2, and Free Willy 3, plus a short-lived animated TV series. A fourth movie is projected for release in 2010. Keiko was rescued from life in a dinky little swimming pool at Reino Aventura in Mexico City, his hide rotting away from skin lesions he’d developed due to poor health. Donations from Warner Brothers’ studio and Craig McCaw led to the establishment of the Free Willy Keiko Foundation in 1995 and with money sent in by thousands of school kids (and many others) in the U.S. who felt moved to help him, Keiko came to the U.S. where he received top-level care and where he became the star-in-residence for several years at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, Oregon. Over $7 million dollars was spent to build a facility to house him and return him to health, and while at his home in Oregon, he regained over a ton in weight. People flocked to see him, and the country fell in love. Eventually an effort was mounted to return Keiko to the wild, where the hope was he could live out his days as Nature intended, and he was flown to Klettsvik Bay in Vestmannaeyjar in Iceland, where he was installed in a specially-built sea pen, to be re-trained to hunt for himself so he could be released to live with his own kind one day. Many felt that these efforts were misguided, if not downright ludicrous, and millions more dollars were spent in the effort to help him have a normal life.
Well, it was a fine and noble dream—but it failed, and Keiko, even though he was finally released, never joined up with a pod to live out his days as everyone hoped. Steinar Bastesen, a Norwegian politician of the time made International news when he said that Keiko should be killed and the meat sent to Africa as foreign aid! I believe the Norwegians realized it would be a huge PR faux pas if they followed up on this threat, but it does highlight how outrageous the entire venture had become. The fact remains that Keiko never learned to hunt again in order to feed himself, and he eventually died of pneumonia, beaching himself on December 12, 2003 at the age of 26 years. He was buried in a cairn of stones in Halsa, Norway, made by local Norwegian school children, and a memorial site remains there. In all, it was a very sad end for an animal much-beloved by millions of people—including me.
Fortunately, the US Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972 made trapping wild killer whales illegal, because some people at least realized it was a mistake to take these creatures out of their element (many never survived being caught in the first place), stick them in little pools, oftentimes in complete isolation from others of their own kind, and then “train” them to perform for our pleasure. Nearly all of the killer whales seen performing now are bred in captivity—and Tillikum has sired a number of them, making him a very valuable commodity. The one figure I saw quoted regarding his worth was $2 million dollars.
The environment these creatures inhabit leaves much to be desired. Imagine being cooped up in a barren little room all alone for years at a time, with no contact with anyone but an alien creature that you can’t talk to. Then these beings engage you in training, so you can perform on command for treats, which is somewhat better than being bored out of your mind. What a complete and total insult to creatures of high intelligence with a complex social structure! The rest of the time they do things to you that you can’t understand. Don’t you think you’d go a little nuts? Don’t you think you’d be insulted, get angry, and rebel? I can say that, if I were placed in that situation, I’d probably have lost it long before Tillikum did—if that is truly what happened. In fact, taking a good look at this whole scenario is animal cruelty in my book.
The thing that annoys me most, however, is that of course the animal is always at fault when bad things happen. Anytime an animal does something to hurt or injure a human being, it is labeled as “bad,” a criminal, and since it is guilty of the ultimate sin, it must be destroyed. No matter who is really at fault, the animal is ALWAYS the one to suffer.
People forget entirely the nature of the creatures who share our lives—the majority of whom have had no choice whatsoever in the matter. We have taken them out of their natural habitat (sometimes even destroyed it), made them totally dependent on us, invested them with all sorts of unnatural thoughts and feelings we’ve projected on them, and then we are horrified when something bad happens. We forget too, that “just because we love them,” what the animal feels toward us is not necessarily love at all—and that they may be utterly mystified or frightened by what we do to them and act to defend themselves. Many of us think of them as little furry humans or our children. Heck, I’m a pet parent myself, but at least I realize that my dog is not a child—and my horse isn’t either. I don’t know why animals seem to like us, but for some strange reason they often do—at least until we prove we can’t be trusted and drive them over the edge to insanity.
I sincerely hope that a humane solution (what a euphemism!) can be found for Tillikum and the others of his kind in captivity, so they may live with others of their own kind and not be expected to perform tricks for the gratification of our children. Let them be what they are: killer whales—Orcas, for Pete’s sake—and stop vilifying Tillikum. Regardless of why he did what he did—and we may never know the real answer, it’s time to back off. As one researcher (I’m sorry, but I don’t know his name) said in a TV interview this past week, there are no recorded incidents of killer whales attacking human beings in the wild—where they belong. And, who wouldn’t rather see them there, swimming and hunting fish or seals with their pods? I know I sure would. Let’s clean up the environment where they ought to live!
No comments:
Post a Comment