Orca Resistance at Sea World

[Alaya]

The video and maybe the article too feels like rough play to me. Otherwise that leg would be gone.

I feel the message is: we played your game, now you play ours.

Animals are mostly innocent and putting revenge type 'thinking' on them is off base.

We recently had to put a dog down. Nice as pie until he turned on you but it was never a revenge thing with him. It was a hot zone dog gene that he had. He was vicious but still innocent.

[barracuda]

The innocent are those who most enjoy playing with their food.

[Canadian_watcher]

I feel moody, trapped, and sit in wait to take down my captors every day, too.

I feel the strain of being taken from my natural state of creative freedom and being made to work 40+ hours at a meaningless job for an arbitrarily assigned salary at the beck and call of some jackass who probably has more interest and sympathy for the orcas at Seaworld than they do for me.

And like the whales I fully expect that if I am not returned to my native habitat soon, I will die from sheer disappointment and resignation, too.

[MacCruiskeen]

The innocent are those who most enjoy playing with their food.

Yeah, barracuda, but: 1) Babies don't know what they're eating; 2) Adult orcas aren't babies; 3) Those orcas weren't eating their trainers. So, if they were playing, it certainly wasn't with food.

(A serious question, and I don't know the answer: Has an orca ever been known to eat a human, or even to try?)

Animals are mostly innocent and putting revenge type 'thinking' on them is off base.

I'm not sure "innocent" is the right word, Alaya (though I'm not sure it's the wrong one either). The thing that really interests me about that film is that the orca held back, although it could have killed the woman very, very easily. Clearly there's some complex set of emotions - and thoughts? - at work there. What does an orca ponder at such a moment? "If I bite her leg off, they'll probably kill me."? "I like her, but sometimes she really gets on my nerves"? "This is my way of telling you I miss my family and want out of jail."? "Ha ha, I'm stronger than you."? "This is great fun, why is nobody laughing?" ? "By god, I hate humans."?

Your guess is at least as good as mine.

There was a recent thread here about emotions in animals; I'll add a link to it on edit.

[barracuda]

Mac, I was sort of thinking along the lines of cats, but watch these orcas having a ball with the seal pups they eat every day...



And keep in mind that a female orca doesn't mature til about fifteen years of age, which is five years past the life span of a long-lived specimen in captivity.

[Queequeg]

It helps to know how these animals live in the wild, immersed in a pulsing, dynamic universe of sound without boundaries. Being in a concrete tank for them is similar to being in a hall of mirrors, all reflections and multiplying images surrounding you ad infinitum. For 20-30 years? I think their restraint is Gandhi-like, myself.
I think these incidents are more like petulant temper tantrums, acting out when they don't get their way...
Also, captive mother dolphins have been observed to discipline their calves by holding them under briefly & invoking every mammals' greatest involuntary panic response as a very serious time-out, as it were.

/Whale researcher IRL, not Orcas.

[barracuda]

Video shows SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau in water with killer whale moments before fatal attack



SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau was in the water up to her shoulders frolicking with a huge killer whale seconds before the orca playfully grabbed her ponytail and dragged her under, according to a tourist's video of the tragedy.

The six-minute video shot Wednesday shows Brancheau feeding and playing with the six-ton Tilikum, the largest and oldest killer whale in captivity.

An edited version of the video posted online by WESH-TV in Orlando, Fla., ends moments before the trainer and whale's relaxed romp suddenly turns fatal.

Police officials had previously said Brancheau slipped and fell into the tank with Tilikum.

Witnesses had recounted dramatic scenarios in which the orca jumped out of the water and grabbed the trainer.

The video instead shows Brancheau feeding him fish, rubbing his nose, pouring buckets of water on his snout and then getting into the water with him.

"He had done an entire show sequence where he performed and he did really well. Dawn was rubbing him down and interacting with him and rewarding him for doing such a good job," SeaWorld curator Chuck Tompkins told CBS' "The Early Show."

"There wasn't anything to indicate to us that there was a problem," he said.

Unlike the other orcas at SeaWorld, Tilikum - who has accidentally killed twice before - is not accustomed to performing with humans in his tank. His part of the famous Shamu show comes at the end, when he uses his massive tail to splash the audience.

"Trainers do interact with Tilikum from the sides of the pool, but do not enter the water with him," SeaWorld said.

But the tourist video clearly shows a smiling Brancheau in the water with the giant whale.

An autopsy found that Brancheau, 40, one of the most experienced trainers at SeaWorld, died of drowning and multiple trauma.

Her body was not recovered from the whale's jaws until staff members coaxed him into a smaller pool and lifted him out of the water on a platform, officials said.

SeaWorld, which has temporarily suspended its killer whale shows, said Tilikum, a 30-year-old orca who is kept largely as a breeding stud, will not be put down. He may still be part of the performances.

"We have every intention of continuing to interact with this animal, though the procedures for working with him will change," SeaWorld officials said in a statement.

Later, the statement was updated to say: "We will continue to care for the animal as we always have regarding his social and psychological stimulation, care and nutrition.

"We are reviewing our protocol on the proximity of our employees and Tilikum."

[Perelandra]

Sea World Trainer Killed By Whale - Tragically, More Proof That These Animals Do Not Belong In Captivity

The tragic death of a Sea World trainer underscores the fact that orca whales just don't belong in captivity. While there are many rumors circulating about both the animal's history and the circumstances that led to the death of an experienced trainer - I would caution you to reserve opinions until the all the facts have been considered.

In the following video clip, please note both the size of the pool and the lack of stimulation and companionship for the whale. Please notice also his behavior and breathing rate, symptoms of stress:

Finally, the reports I read mentioned that the whales were behaving peculiarly that day, always a red flag for any animal trainer.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/candacewhiting/

(Click on Watch on Youtube to view.)

[Nordic]

"This is great fun, why is nobody laughing?"

That's what I was thinking.

Maybe it's the toothy smile as he ever-so-delicately holds her leg in his jaws.

[Perelandra]

The story of Ishmael

Ishmael , a young male orca from J or L pod was captured together with about 65 members of his greater family in October 1968 near Yukon Harbor, WA. While most of the whales were released after a while, five young male orcas weren't that lucky.
Cuddles, the smallest of the five with 351 cm, was sent the farthest. Until 1971 he stayed at Flamingo Land in Yorkshire, Great Britain. Then he was transferred to Dudley Zoo in Worcester, Great Britain. There he died in April 1974. During his whole time in captivity he was all alone by himself.

Mamuk (396 cm and 1,361 kg) was sent to Sea-Arama Marineworld in Galveston, Texas, where he died in June 1974. Since Sea-Arama's other orca, Lil Nooka, had already died in March 1971, the park lost its last orca with Mamuk.

Haida (427 cm and 1,452 kg) was sent to Sealand Victoria, BC. In October 1982 he died on a lung infection, one of the most common reasons of death in captivity. Sealand Victoria replaced him by an Icelandic female orca which they also called Haida (Haida 2). After a tragic accident on February 20, 1991, which caused the death of part-time trainer Keltie Byrne, Sealand Victoria closed down in 1993. Haida 2 was transferred to SeaWorld Texas in January 1993 together with her son Kyuquet, born on December 24, 1991.

The two biggest ones, Ishmael (518 cm and 2,041 kg) and Ahab (579 cm and 2,495 kg), were chosen to join the U.S. Navy in Hawaii.

Named after the main characters of Herman Melville's famous "Moby Dick", the two stayed together until 1971 and were used in the U.S. Navy Project Deep Ops.

Then in February 1971, 2 years and 4 months after his capture, Ishmael managed to escape from his handlers off the north coast of Oahu. Due to radio tag failure there was no followup.

Ahab remained in the hands of the U.S. Navy and died in 1974.

Maybe Ishmael didn't survive the first weeks in freedom - but maybe he's still out there, roaming the seas...

http://www.orcahome.de/ishmael.htm

[Avalon]

Tilikum ("'til he cums"?), was being kept as a stud orca.

I wonder if his progeny have inherited his personality as well as his size? That would be an interesting addition to the gene pool in the wild, but not so good for an exhibition pool.

[operator kos]

The aquatic uprising continues!

Shoppers flee as Dubai shark aquarium cracks open

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Interestingly, to date, there have been a total of five orcas named Nootka.
.....
Sea World, for instance, has had 51 Shamus.

That's keyword hijacking, creating decoys to deceive as counterpropaganda.

More orca psyops-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Horton


Remember the 1988 presidential campaign racism agit-prop scare story about Willie Horton, the big black killer on parole?
How do you suppose Republican voters reacted to the CIA-Hollywood movie called 'Free Willie' about a big black killer whale at the start of the Clinton admin.?

Note the implied threat to the child under the massive BLACK killer orca in the poster-


Having a back story of real dead orca trainers only fuels the agit-prop.

[smiths]

this is agit-slop hugh,

anyway, thats not a child under the orca, its Michael Jackson

[Avalon]

Now in the video taken just before her death, are they actually referring to the orca as being Shamu? There's a running narration being piped in, and signs saying you can have a meal with Shamu.

At one point in the video we catch a fragment of conversation nearby. I think it was someone saying "Do you think she would do that if ..." while she is throwing a pailful of water at the orca's fin. You can definitely see at the end that she is in the water with him.