News & Politics - What should be done with captive orcas?

**sunnykerr** · 02-25-2010, 07:27 PM

I've been hearing a lot about the American news heavily featuring the recent death of a killer whale trainer. I think this story does a good job of exploring the different issues:

Quote:

What to do with captive orcas?

The recent attack by a captive orca on its trainer at a SeaWorld facility in Orlando, Florida, has again raised questions about our relationship with these top marine predators.

No one knows what triggered the latest incident, and experts agree that it is almost impossible to determine why the orca, called Tilikum, reacted as it did.

But it does highlight the tensions that occur when we choose to interact closely with these huge animals.

It is also debatable what to do with those orcas, also known as killer whales, that remain in captivity.

"They are highly social animals that tend to live in cohesive groups, so it's quite an artificial environment to capture them and put them in a small area," says Dr Andrew Foote, an expert on wild orcas from the University of Aberdeen, UK

"The tragic events are a reminder that orcas are wild, strong and often unpredictable animals," says Danny Groves, of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS).

Wild attacks

Reports differ, but there have been up to 24 attacks by captive orcas on people.

Contrary to popular perception, attacks by wild orcas on people have also been recorded, though no one has been hurt.

Researcher Chris Pierpoint of the Marine Mammal Observer Association was working in Antarctica when he once subjected to a rather sophisticated, planned attack by a group of orcas.

Wild orcas in the region cooperate to hunt by swimming together towards seals resting on ice floes.

As they do so, they create a bow wave that washes the hapless seal from the ice and into the water.

"Chris Pierpoint had that done to him when in a rib in Antarctica," says Dr Foote, though he wasn't thrown overboard.

"A famous incidence occurred in the 1960s when a surfer was knocked off his board, but he was fine, the whale didn't bite."

A couple of years ago in Alaska, a child swimming in the sea also described how an orca made a bee-line toward him, before aborting a supposed attack at the last minute.

One idea is that air bubbles in neoprene wetsuits can confuse the echolocation of orcas, so they do not realise that they are approaching a person.

But the scarcity of such attacks underlines the difficulty in pinpointing their cause.

"It's really isolated incidences. Killer whales live in cold water so they don't overlap with people much," says Dr Foote.

Send them home?

What the latest attack by a captive orca reveals is just how little we still know about the animals, in captivity and in the wild.

For example, we are only just glimpsing how intelligent orcas really are and the complexity of their society.

However, few insights come from studying captive whales, though some have helped reveal their acoustic behaviour.

"The science doesn't justify the captivity. One thing I would hope is that this unfortunate incident might lead to a considered discussion on phasing out these marine parks." (quote not attributed in the story)

So what can or should be done with captive orcas?

One option would be to prevent further deaths by restricting trainers from encroaching too close to the poolside.

Another would be to put down any whale considered too dangerous to be kept in captivity.

The final option, and that which on the surface appears the most palatable from an animals rights perspective, is to release those whales still in captivity back into the wild.

The WDCS has repeatedly called for captive whales to be returned, not least because captivity appears to drastically reduce their life expectancy.

But that is not as simple as it sounds.

A study published by US and Danish scientists last year in the journal Marine Mammal Science documents the attempts to return a killer whale named Keiko from captivity back to the ocean.

Captured in 1979 as a near two-year-old calf, Keiko found fame as the star of the 1993 family film Free Willy, after which public pressure grew to release him back to the wild.

Training for his reintroduction began in 1996, and after 2000 his trainers began taking him out into the sea on open ocean swims designed to prepare him for a wild life.

But Keiko rarely interacted with wild orcas, and never integrated into a wild pod.

He also struggled to learn how to hunt, making shallower and less frequent dives than wild whales.

Eventually, and despite the best efforts of his trainers, he could not break his need for human contact, and kept following or returning to the trainers' boat.

Keiko eventually died, still semi-captive in 2003.

"The release of Keiko demonstrated that release of long-term captive animals is especially challenging and while we as humans might find it appealing to free a long-term captive animal, the survival and well being of the animal may be severely impacted in doing so," the report's authors write.

BBC - Earth News - Killer whales: What to do with captive orcas?

Personally, I'm rather partial to the idea that we keep trying to help whales return to their natural habitat. Not to mention that we should just stop capturing them...

That's what I think. What do you guys think?

vc318 · 02-26-2010, 05:18 PM

I rather enjoy Sea World and places of the sort but what once used to be a means to educate people about sea animals and sorts has possibly gotten out of hand. But what keeps Sea World in business is that when you go there, people are intrigued by what they see. I mean, how many times are you going to see killer whales, penguins or polar bears? So this sort of thing will continue to go on. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised with the terrible incident that happened the other day with that trainer that another team of people aren't coming up with ideas to make an "even better" and "much safer" park than Sea World. But in response to your question, I wish they weren't locked up in tanks either. Nothing can replace being in the sea, in my opinion.

**sunnykerr** · 02-26-2010, 08:15 PM

Well, it is starting up again:

Quote:

US killer whale show to restart

SeaWorld Orlando's killer whale show is to reopen on Saturday without staff in the water after a whale killed one of the trainers, the company chief says.

Jim Atchison said this would be the case until a review was finished.

He said it was believed an orca being trained by Dawn Brancheau dragged her to her death by drowning after her long ponytail swung out in front of it.

Her former coach, Thad Lacinak, said she would have agreed with him, had she lived, that it was a simple mistake.

Funeral services for Ms Brancheau are to be held on Sunday and Monday in Chicago, with a memorial service to take place later in Orlando, park officials said.

The whale, which is named Tilikum, is to be kept at the park despite its links to two other deaths.

"He will remain an active and contributing member of the team, despite what happened," said Mr Atchison.

The company, which also has locations in San Diego and San Antonio, said it was reviewing its procedures for the whales and trainers to interact.

Horrified tourists using the viewing glass could see the 12,000lb (5.9tn) whale attack Ms Brancheau.

Ms Brancheau's sister, Diane Gross, said her sister, 40, had loved the park's whales as though they were her children.

"It was her dream job since she was nine years old," she added, speaking of her sister's ambition to work at SeaWorld.

'Her mistake'

The president of SeaWorld Parks and Entertainment, Jim Atchison, told a news conference that, while it was too early to conclude what had happened exactly, the park believed the whale had grabbed its trainer by her hair.

Earlier, Mr Lacinak, the former head trainer at SeaWorld who coached Ms Brancheau, said after viewing video of the attack that he believed she had made a simple mistake.

"She wasn't, obviously, watching what she was doing with her ponytail and the ponytail drifted into the water," he told ABC.

"Dawn, if she was standing here with me right now, would tell you that it was her mistake in allowing that to happen," he added.

Speaking separately to the Associated Press news agency, Mr Lacinak said: "It was a novel item in the water, and he [the whale] grabbed hold of it, not necessarily in an aggressive way."

An eyewitness, Sue Nichols, spoke earlier of seeing Ms Brancheau petting the whale and talking to it.

"Then all of a sudden he just reached up," she said.

"He got her in the water, and he took her underwater, and he had her under for quite a while. He came up out of the water, and he had her in his mouth."

An alarm was sounded and park employees scattered around the pool with a net as audience members were rushed away, she added.

Third death

Chuck Tompkins, chief of animal training at SeaWorld Orlando, has said Tilikum would not survive in the wild because the animal had been captive for so long.

He added that destroying the whale was not an option because it was an important part of the breeding programme at SeaWorld and a companion to seven other whales there.

However, this is the third death involving the orca.

In 1991, trainer Keltie Lee Byrne fell into a tank holding Tilikum and two other whales at Sealand of the Pacific in Victoria, Canada.

An inquest found the whales had prevented her from climbing out of the tank and ruled her death an accident.

At SeaWorld Orlando, in 1999, the body of Daniel Dukes, 27, was found naked, draped across the whale's body.

He had reportedly got past security, remaining in the park after it had closed, and wearing only swimming trunks, he either jumped, fell or was pulled into the frigid water of the huge tank.

An inquest ruled that he had died of hypothermia but officials also said it appeared Tilikum had bitten the man and torn off his trunks, apparently believing he was a toy to play with.

BBC News - US killer whale show to resume after trainer is killed

It seems the general consensus that the whale isn't necessarily to blame for the trainer's death. And I tend to agree with that. It was just doing what it was built to do. No amount of training can rob an animal of all of its instincts and, you know, what is just fun playing around to a whale weighing several tons is quite different to the tiny human swimming besides it.

Mostly, though, I think there's a difference between whales and penguins, and even between whales and polar bears. Some animals bear captivity better than others. I don't know if it's because whales are so much bigger than penguins and polar bears, but it just doesn't seem right to keep them in tiny little enclosures like that.

And, let's face it, if a penguin loses it and turns on a minder, the consequences are bound to be a little less dramatic.

strawberrypie · 06-22-2010, 09:26 PM

I know this is kinda old but I just saw this thread

I don't understand the appeal of orcas. Personally, I'm quite terrified of them. Why some people find them cute, I'll never know.

To put yourself outside of your element, where they move better (water) is nonsense enough, not to mention they're probably the largest predator alive. They are huge, people. What on earth are the trainers thinking? This is a huge carnivore. In the wild, their territories are tremendously big. And, it's a highly social animal. Take all of that away and put them in a small pool. It's like if you were suddenly trapped in a small closet for the rest of your life. Of course this kind of thing happens. I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often.

_vega_ · 06-22-2010, 10:46 PM

I think there should be an international law forbidding the capture of whales.

That said, I saw Keiko a few times as a kid before the Free Willy movies even aired and I grew attached to him, so I followed the news about his journey to the wild and was horrified to read so many things that happened to him. He could never form a true bond with members of his species and was attaked on occasions by wild orcas that never accepted him. He was desperate for human contact and once he found people in Norway he tried to be as close to them as possible. He loved children and suffered depressions for being away from the environment he grew up in. He died at 27 from pneumonia when the average time of death for his species is around 35.

That's why I don't believe in releasing the orcas that have been held captive for long periods of time. I don't believe they will adapt to their new living circumstances and releasing them to the wild when they have been stripped from their natural instincts is a brutal thing to do. The man needs to learn he is not God, these animals are not dogs, they are meant to live in the ocean but we can't just pretend we have the power to take them and then give them back.

I say, let's just stop their capture completely and make sure that those that have spent a long time in captivity can mantain a long and happy life there without being paraded as if they were part of a circus.

**sunnykerr** · 06-23-2010, 06:06 PM

I agree that releasing orcas that have been domesticated is just as problematic as capturing them to entertain the masses. It feels like violating the natural order and then having the animal pay the price for that, when it's really not its fault.

The only reason I would hesitate to outright ban the "capture" of wild whales is in cases where they face extinction. Because, let's face it, most animal species out there who face extinction do so because of human action, indirect or otherwise. Where that is the case, it feels light we ought to take responsibility for our actions and seek to remedy the situation as best we can.

Though, again, I seem to contradict myself. Because any rectification done in a controlled environment would lead to domesticated animals, which could hardly be safely released into the wild thereafter...

I have no answers. Bleh.


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