Do not stray into the lair of dragons for you are crunchy and go well with ketchup

I saw a disturbing documentary on captive killer whales the other night, but before we get into that I present you with a bit of country western doggerel that will turn that frown upside down... 

Family reunions is no place to find a wife

           Cuz you and she'll be giving birth to incestuary life

            You gals think us boys from Alabama are just hicks

            Cuz all we really wanna do is check you chicks for ticks   (then the oboe solo...)

The documentary was called Killerfish and was created by a former trainer at Sea World in Orlando, Florida.  (Killerfish is what the local native americans called killer whales.)  Sometime back in the early seventies, I believe, some enterprising fellows came up with the idea that a trained captive killer whale would make a swell and profitable attraction for paying audiences.  They netted off a small portion of puget sound in the Vancouver, B.C. area.  They put up a small grandstand overlooking the pool which was about half the size of an olympic swimming pool.  Next to the pool they had erected a  roofed steel holding tank, 20 feet by 30 feet, to keep their killer whale safe from vandalism when the 'park' was closed.

The consortium dragooned a small regatta of fishing trawlers with the idea of chasing down the local killer whale pod and isolating one of the babies and trapping it in a net.  It would then be transferred via a sling and crane to a flat bed truck and dumped into the pool.  I imagine they reasoned that if classical conditioning and shaped behaviors could be used to train pigeons to do simple tricks, imagine what the same process could do for an animal as smart as a killer whale.  As the trawler regatta chased down the pod, the males separated from the females and the youngsters, and led the boats in one direction while the females and young ones veered off into a side channel.  The trawler captains eventually realized they had been duped by the males and managed to find the other whales and blockaded them into a small bay.  They separated one young killer whale from the others and triumphantly hauled it up via ropes and slings onto the deck.  The rest of the pod stayed as close to that boat as they could.  For several hours the pod and the captured baby exchanged frantic vocalizations till the boat with its prize motored up to the pool and deposited its prize catch.  In the process of the capture three other young killer whales died.
  

A trainer managed to teach the young killer whale several tricks and the park now named Sealand of the Pacific was a moderate success.  As the whale grew in size, the time spent in the small metal holding tank began to affect its behavior and performances declined as the whale showed signs of frustration and aggression.  Audiences declined, the park was closed and the owners were forced to sell their prized catch to Sea World of Orlando Florida, a group with a larger pool, more professional trainers and, hopefully, better overall conditions.  Thus was the phenonemon of performing killer whales born.

Fast forward to 1981.  The catching of killer whales in Puget Sound was outlawed as the public learned of the aforementioned events.  Killer whale catching now migrated to the coast of iceland.  Another young killer whale was captured and eventually ended up at Sea World in Orlando.  He was named Tilikum and became a featured performer at the park where he was known to the public as Shamu a name shared by many captive performing killer whales. Tilikum as an adult is 12.5 feet long and weighs 12,000 pounds.  His pectoral fins are seven feet long and his dorsal tale fin measures 6.5 feet high.  It's hard to imagine the majesty of that dorsal fin as it has flopped over to one side.  In the wild this is seen as the symptom of a sick or depressed whale perhaps one banished from the pod for some transgression.  The former trainers that were interviewed for this movie stated that the animals were mistreated away from the public eye.  They were often deprived of food to make them more desperate to perform their various routines up to expectations.

Here's one of the trainers and his near death experience

In 1991  a popular and very accomplished female trainer was pulled into the pool by her arm and dragged to the bottom where she drowned.  Tilikum would eventually kill two others.  One was a drifter who somehow snuck into the park after hours and decided to take a swim in the whale pool.  They found his body the next morning being towed around on Tilikum's back.  He had been severely mauled and his scotum had been bitten off.                                                                        

     The third death also involved a trainer.  Dawn Brancheau was the perfect ideal of a Sea World trainer.  Blond, beautiful and charismatic, she was considered one of the top killer whale trainers.  She too was pulled into the water by Tilikum.  He pulled her under until she drowned.  He then swam around the pool dragging her lifeless body by the arm.  This incident took place in front of a full house.  The staff was eventually able to recover the body minus the arm which Tilikum had eaten.  She had also been completely scalped of her long blond hair.  Management made up a bogus story to tell the public and confiscated all video that had been taken of the event.  They blamed the trainer for the 'accident' so that the authorities wouldn't put the animal to death since a trained adult killer whale was worth millions.  Tilikum is still performing at Sea World.  To date, he has sired 21 offspring all of which are performing in various aquatic amusement parks around the country.

     An autopsy of an adult killer whale revealed that their brains are every bit as complex as ours with an extended frontal lobe where emotions and compassion reside.  Their capacity for reasoning and planning is evident in their group strategies for surrounding and catching schools of fish.  Whale researchers have also reported that their communication abilities, both audible and sub-audible sonar, are extremely complex.

  

I'm reminded that back in the late nineteenth century South African Brits captured a bushman of the Kalahari.  At the time they were called Hottentots and were hunted for sport.  Because of their strange appearance they were not considered human.  This captured 'Hottentot' was put in a cage and carted around England for the amusement of paying audiences.  I posit that if you do something potentially dangerous, such as swimming and performing with a 12,000 pound killer whale, chaos theory says that eventually the odds will catch up with you.  I wonder what the people at Sea World think now that this video, which was shown in prime time on CNN, has been broadcast.  Maybe it's time to free Willy.  

     Mickey da Mayor of Happy Acres, Killer Whale Free