Experts from SeaWorld gathered in San Diego last week to mull over an incident in which an orca dragged a trainer underwater during a show.
The orca, 21/2-ton Kasatka, twice held trainer Ken Peters underwater for less than a minute each time during the finale of a show at Shamu Stadium at SeaWorld. The act called for the orca to leap out of the water so Peters could dive off her nose. Instead, Kasatka grabbed Peters’ foot in her mouth and dragged him toward the bottom of the tank.
Peters suffered a broken foot, but otherwise was fine.
While the SeaWorld experts discuss among themselves why a killer whale would turn on a trainer, the non-experts among us can only wonder why it doesn’t happen all of the time.
The experts, so far, theorize that Kasatka may have been put out by a spat with another whale (no doubt about whose name comes first on the marquee), grumpy because of the weather, or just irritable from a stomach ache.
“Some mornings they just wake up not as willing to do the show as others,” said Ken Balcomb, director of the Center for Whale Research in Friday Harbor. “If the trainer doesn’t recognize it’s not a good day, this will happen.”
Hard to imagine that Kasatka, who is 30 years old, just doesn’t feel like doing the show, day after day, month after month, year after year.
It would be really refreshing to hear SeaWorld’s whale researchers admit that maybe, just maybe, the majestic orcas, who are born and designed to roam the ocean with their small, tight-knit families (pods), are bored to tears living in man-made tanks, performing unnatural acts with humans for human entertainment and being fed seafood they don’t have to hunt for, among other indignities.
Since SeaWorld won’t say it, we’ll let the United States Humane Society say it, which it did after a similar incident at the SeaWorld facility in San Antonio in 2004 involving a whale named Ky:
“Ky, like every captive wild animal in the world, whether a circus elephant or a white tiger in Las Vegas, has complex physical and behavioral needs, which can never be fully satisfied in captivity. Breeding is just one of many such needs among killer whales … They also require lots of open water and the life-long companionship of their own family members.”
Elephants and whales are particularly fascinating to humans because they are so intelligent, social and huge. It’s long past time to admit, no anthropomorphism needed, that captivity is anathema to these animals, just as it is to humans.
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