Rick Raw: Orca Whales Should Be Free, Not Confined in Tanks–Death of Trainer Underscores The Cruel Exhibition of Whales for Profit

By Rick Grant Commentary rickgrant01@comcast.net

The death of 40 year old trainer, Dawn Brancheau at SeaWorld, although tragic, underscores the cruel exhibition of Orca Whales for profit is morally wrong. In fact, confining any wild animals in cages or water tanks for human entertainment is unconscionable.

These magnificent Orcas roam the oceans as predators, feeding on seals and other marine life. They belong in the open ocean not in a tank, which severely limits their movement. Not surprisingly, these Orca prisoners can be neurotic and lash out at their trainers.

Orcas are highly intelligent mammals that travel in family pods. They seem to like humans but only if they are free to swim back into the ocean. Keiko, the whale from "Free Willie" movie was taken to Iceland off the coast and placed into a large cordoned off area in the bay for a adjustment period.

Keiko’ s handlers’ goal was for him to find his long lost pod. Eventually, Keiko was free to roam the ocean if he wanted. However, he would go up to boats and ships in the bay, looking for human interaction.

Given the choice, and Keiko’s background with humans, he chose to stay in the bay and seek human company. When he tried to join a pod, he was rejected. Still, Keiko seemed happy with his new freedom and lived out his life still bonded to humans.

Today it’s illegal to kidnap whales from the open ocean for shipment to sea parks. SeaWorld has a breeding program to release Orcas back to the ocean and to exhibit them in the tanks.

That’s admirable, but for the confined whales, including Tillikum, the large male that killed Ms. Brancheau, he’s serving hard time in a glorified swimming pool jail. Tillikum was kidnaped in 1983, and has acted as a breeding male since then.

Since Orcas are high on the intelligence scale, they deserve to be free and not presented for human entertainment. In the wild, Orcas avoid humans unless they have a calf, then divers should stay away, giving the mother Orca a wide path.

These large mammals sense that we are intelligent beings like them. Pioneering researchers like the late John C. Lilly studied human to dolphin and whale communication. Lilly concluded that dolphins and whales have a sophisticated multidimensional language and could psychically communicate with humans.

Lilly was looking for the holy grail of dolphin-human communication--a language link that would allow humans to talk to dolphins and whales. He never found that link, but he applied his research with dolphins and whales to his human philosophy learned from these animals in his groundbreaking book "The Mind of A Dolphin."

In captivity, there have been numerous Orca attacks on trainers. Tillikum was involved in the death of a trainer in Canada in 1991. And then, a man who had sneaked into SeaWorld in Florida in 1999 was killed in Tillikum’s pool.

The only way to view these impressive sea beast is to travel to its natural habitat near seal colonies and view each whale killing their prey by coming up on the seal at a high rate of speed, grabbing the seal, and leaping out of the water with the seal in its mouth, then shaking it like a rag doll.

SeaWorld does rescue beached whales, saving their lives and releasing them back into the ocean. If rescue and research are their goals then fine, hurray for SeaWorld. However, the SeaWorld corporation exists for profit from selling tickets to its shows by imprisoning these large whales.

If Lilly had developed a human-whale language, and we asked Tillikum, "Hey Tillikum are you happy at SeaWorld?" His answer would be, "Hell no, get me out of this tank, I’m going crazy!"
Zoos and sea-parks rationalize their existence by having breeding and animal conservation programs.

The real truth is: They exist to make money for the company that owns them. All wild animals should be free and left alone. We can observe them at a safe distance, but human contact disturbs their natural order.