Bunge County, say rescue, uh sixty six hundred Harbor Drive okay, SeaWorld
my fourteenth okay, and where's the patient located inside? They are at Shamboo
Stadium. She actually have a trainer in the water with one of our whales,
the whale that they're not supposed to be in the water with. Okay,
So we don't know what's going on. We were just told to call
and have people in here on standby when they get the person out. Okay.
And do you know if so, you don't know if the person if
they're having a medical problem, no idea, Okay, very well, I
don't even think they're out of the water yet. They're still in there with
the whale, so okay, but someone is un seen and they are getting
them out of the water. Now. There are people working on it,
yes, about two three people over there right now. All right, we'll
get somebody in round. Okay. They're gate number three to Shamoo Stadium,
Gate three, G three, right, got it? Okay, thank you,
thank you. Bye. Welcome to episode fifty three of Get It Alive,
a podcast where me your host, Ashley, every other week tells you
a new animal tech story and I'm your other host, Nick, and I
have a feeling we're gonna be very mad in this episode, more so than
usual for sure. What's the same a lot because we get angry a lot
we do, and hopefully, well not hopefully you all will get angry as
well. If you're listening to this podcast, you're one of us, and
you're gonna be mad about it. I think, no matter where you are
on the animal love spectrum, it's upsetting this want to get the kind of
hits some nerves like in certain areas, regardless of how you feel about it,
you know. So before we even get into it, I'm going to
give a warning right at the top for this is a content warning for animal
abuse and suffering, miscarriage, eating disorders, and incest. Every time I
think I know what's going to happen episode, you pull out some wild shit.
Yeah we we We've had a lot of fucked up episodes. The concept
warning really needed, Like we talked about people dying on a regular basis,
Like I don't think we need to worry about an abortion or whatever. Miss
First all, miscarriage is different from abortion, somewhat similar idea, but once
intentional one's not so this is probably gonna be one of our more intense episodes
in terms of depressing content. Once again, we talked about people dying,
oh almost every episode. I don't think this is going to be that much
worse. I want to make it super clear though, that we're going to
talk about some fucked up stuff. So if you're not mentally in a space
where that's the thing you want to listen to, maybe move along to a
different episode or a different different podcasts, probably for an out, please come
back. So I do want to say before we get started, Nick and
I released a bonus episode last week on our exclusive Patreon feed, so you
can become patron of ours at patreon dot com. Slash get At a live
podcast, and we watched Blackfish together and it was my first time. That
was fun. Yeah, so that was our prep for this episodisode. So
maybe listen to that one first, or you can listen to it after.
I guess it really doesn't matter, but also watch Blackfish if you want more
information after this episode on what we're gonna be talking about, which is a
lot about SeaWorld. Yeah, it was. It was a different bonus episode
for sure. We kind of watched it and talked along as we as we
were watching it. So if you like to watch along with us, go
ahead. And it's on Amazon Prime, yeah, yep, and a bunch
of other places you can find it. Just google it. I think I
think we had a list that I named off when in the episode. Yep.
Yeah, so check that out if you would like to become a patron,
or if you want to just like more. There's more bonus episodes with
Nick and I. We released at least one every month, but yeah,
I want to get started as soon as possible because for normal episodes, just
for context, maybe I'll have like six pages of notes, and for this
episode, I have twelve. You were texting me like day by day with
more and more pages, and we were supposed to record. Yeah, we're
supposed to record yesterday. We ended up not and then you text me last
night with saying you had more pages of notes. It was like I thought
you were done, Like what the fuck are we doing here? I could
go on for hours, guys. This is this is like almost like a
cult, like captive Orcas. People who like them and people who do not
like them. It feels like a cult. People are really into it.
I feel like i've I'm now part of those people. I know the whales
by name, I know their lineage like it is. It's been an experience,
so I want to think right off the bat. Laura Knight who suggested
I read the book Beneath the Surface by John Hargrove, who is a previous
senior ORCHA trainer at SeaWorld. I listened to the audiobook and then bought the
physical book. I have it with me right now. I it consumed me.
I loved it so much. It's a great book. Highly recommend it
in a lot of the information we're going to talk about today is from that,
supplemented with some study like scientific studies online. But I just want to
make clear at the offset I am using information from this book Beneath the Surface,
or from articles online like other nonprofits nat GEO scientific articles. Everything else.
This is Nick and I's opinion, So SeaWorld don't come for us,
and everything I say is opinion and not fact. Let's just get that out
right now. Do not take anything I says as gospel. Yes, there's
nothing in this that I am making up. It's all from somewhere else.
So I just want to throw that out there because SeaWorld is a really bitchy
organization in my opinion, so don't come for us. Yeah, I imagine
a lot of people would agree with you. Perfect. I also want to
give a shout out to at Amelco A M. E. L. Ceo
I believe on Instagram who suggested Orcus to us as well, and they specifically
mentioned the whale Tillicom And they also suggested the book Orca by Jason Colby.
And they also set me an article on Orcas about Orca infanticide, which I
didn't have time to include in this episode. It's if you don't know what
fantaside is, it's them killing other baby orcas interesting. So yeah, so
we're not going to touch on that. But that's the thing that has now
been recorded in Nature, which is horrifying post birth abortion, so murder,
yeah, Nick, No, Nick, it's like male whales killing babies so
typically so they could mate with the females. Does that happened to like a
lot of animals though, don't bears do that? Yeah? Everything I know
is refers back to bears, so yeah, classic. No, it's the
first time it's been recorded in Orcas though. Oh no, shit, Yeah,
so anyways, thank you both for suggesting that I haven't read the book
Orca. But once again, I read the book Beneath the Surface. We'll
add it to our book club on our website, and I'll also link to
it in our episode description. Let's dive right in pun intended. I'm so
ready. I'm going to start with quoting Sea World's website. So according to
their website. Also, I'm not going to link to their website in our
episode description. If you care to know more about them as an organization,
look them up. You can probably learn about the whales, at least not
as much as you would think. They do not have a lot on them
really. Yeah, they have like little icons you can click that just say
like one little fact about the whale. But they do not divulge a lot
about their whales. Oh I wonder why? Yeah. Crazy. So,
according to SeaWorld's website quote, SeaWorld's legacy of animal rescue spans more than fifty
years. In that time, SeaWorld's animal rescue teams have helped rescue more than
forty thousand, sick, injured, and orphaned animals in need. Our teams
are on call twenty four to seven three sixty five, partnering with multiple government
agencies, conservationists, stranding networks, zoological facilities, and others to rescue and
help animals in need of care, always with the goal of rehabilitating them and
returning them to the wild end. Quote, so a lot of that could
be true, Like there's like an oil splur for stuff. I know SeaWorld
is always like a big part of the cleanup and the rescue of the animals.
So a lot of that could be true. Forty thousand animals a lot
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not taking away from some good they
have done, exactly. Yeah. I want to want to try and give
them, give them the profits that they deserve when they deserve it. That
way, can probably rip them when they when they deserve to be ripped.
I have two more quotes from their website that will tie into everything we're going
to talk about. So the next quote is quote, our company actively supports
global conservation initiatives by providing financial and scientific support to organizations focused on animal rescue
and rehabilitation, conservation education, habitat protection, and species research. Additionally,
the SeaWorld in Bush Gardens Conservation Fund has donated more than sixteen point five million,
supporting over one thy two hundred animal conservation projects on all seven continents across
the globe, including coral refrustoration, preventing coastal erosion, habitat protection, and
simply keeping our oceans clean. End quote nice a lead of business. And
the next quote quote First of all, there's a type on this. I'm
just going to read it as they wrote it, so if it sounds weird,
it's because they wrote it that way. Quote. SeaWorld help found and
continues to support the Killer Whale Research and Conservation Program KWRCP, led by the
National Fish and Wildlife Foundation NFWF. Part of the KWRCP is part of c
World's ten million dollar pledge to fund research and conservation for killer whales in the
wild, the largest private commitment of its kind. Oh. The KWRCP focuses
on three strategies, increasing prey availability, improving habitat quality, and strengthening management
through crucial research. End quote. That's good. I'm sure there's not conflict
of interest. There were. The biggest private donor towards Orca whales is the
exact people stealing orca wheels from the wild. It's not a problem at all.
So yeah, just keep all that in mind as we keep going.
Yeah, that's what they state on their website. You know. You know
what's funny about that about having a typo in there. I guarantee lawyers wrote
that, Like you'd think that lawyers will be able to go through that and
realize they fucked up. Yeah, just missing one letter and helps stupid or
helped. Yeah. So I'm gonna start with a big announcement, one that
really surprised me as as doing research on this, and that I don't think
many people talk about it at least. I mean, also, this is
like the first I've really delved into the whole captive orca world and you're now
an expert. It feels that way you have done so much research on this
shit, like you are well beyond the normal scale of knowledge on this oh
easily. Yeah, yeah, yeah for sure. So in twenty sixteen,
SeaWorld announced that they were ending their orca breeding program, which means that the
orcas in SeaWorld today are the last generation of killer whales that SeaWorld will ever
own. Oh that's good, So it sounds really cool, right. Yeah.
However, they're quick to point out that quote the public can still see
their whales for decades to come because they are such a long lived species.
That is true. Well, they're supposed to be. In the right circumstances,
they should live a while, like in the wild. Yeah, okay.
So as of March twenty twenty three, there are at least fifty four
orcas in captivity or like around the world, not just in SeaWorld facilities,
and twenty five of those were captured from the wild and twenty nine were born
in captivity. Since nineteen sixty one, one hundred and sixty six orcas have
been taken from the wild, and one hundred and thirty one of those are
now dead. Jesus one hundred Yeah, one hundred and seventy four orcas have
died in captivity, not including numerous miscarried or stillborn cabs. Wow. Wow,
So you said they live for a while, So I'm sure they're capturing
adults when they capture them. So then they're obviously dying like at their normal
age, right, because they should still be alive after sixty years. So
we'll get we'll get into it. There's so much to unpack here. So
the way in which they got their wild orcas is also very sinister, as
you could probably fucking imagine watch Blackfish. Yeah, it's it's really, there's
footage. It's a bit fucked. There's an incredible amount of footage out there
of everything that's the world does, including capturing wild orcas, slash killing wild
orcas for profit accidentally. Okay, let's not just like make them up the
evil they're accidentally murdering the baby's mothers. Not always now, now we'll get
into it. Yeah, and it's also not just SeaWorld doing this. I
will add, like, there are plenty of other people out there part of
that tragedy. So yeah, but we'll touch on that a minute. They
chase the wild orcas with boats and helicopters and then use typically like back in
the day when they were doing it, using nets to separate the whales,
and some orcas would drown in those nets, and the men trying to catch
them would tie rocks to their fins so the bodies would sync essentially hiding the
evidence of their crimes. Because it was not super legal at the time of
them doing this. I don't think it's super legal now, is it.
Oh, it's especially not legal now because the marine Mammal Protection Act was passed
in nineteen seventy two, but for years after that, like at least four
years, SeaWorld was still taking orcs from the wild until they were caught in
a public scandal basically when people realized that they were explosives to scare the orcas
into nets for captured, and they've since been banned from taking orcas in the
Pacific Northwest. I wonder like what people think where, like where the whales
came from? You know, like I don't I don't know what my thoughts
were before watching Black Blackfish, right before all the scannals came out about SeaWorld,
because it's kind of happened through our childhood that we kind of learned SeaWorld
as shit. So I wonder like what the public thought, like where these
whales are coming from? I think there were rescue animals that were like genuinely
injured in nets and stuff like accidentally was that the thought? And that's that's
probably how it's well, that's not probably how it started. We're going to
touch on that in a second. It is, but to be fully transparent,
Nick and I both visited SeaWorld once in our lifetimes. We were both
children. But I, even as a child who loved animals, I did
not think of that. No, I mean like I also didn't enjoy SeaWorld.
I got attacked by mosquitoes and had to go infirm or it was a
bad dath really broke out like it was bad. It was bad fucking SeaWorld
so wild. Also broke my nose on that trip. It was a wild
fak To be fair, it's not SeaWorld's fault that the mosquitoes tried to kill
you. No, I'm gonna blame them anyway. Sure, it's also not
their fault that broke my nose on a toilet seat that night. But like,
I'm still gonna blame them. Oh, that's so funny, because't look
at it happens all right anyways. SeaWorld now has eighteen orcas in the company's
possession. Currently, the youngest orc at SeaWorld that I could find is Camea,
an eight year old female that lives in San Antonio, Texas. Previously,
the youngest whale was Amaya in San Diego, but she died quote from
an illness in twenty twenty one. And how old was she Amayah when she
died, was God, I think like six, Oh god, that's that
even fully grown for an orca. No, no, Jesus, No,
that's immature. Yep. Oh God. They don't imagture or they don't sexually
mature until they're like in their teens. Yeah. No, I mean they,
like you said, they live forever, so like, yeah, it
takes time for this shit to happen. Yeah, think of it like a
human lifespan. That's basically we're going to get into it. That's a whole
other topic. There's so much to cover here. Okay, that's going so
in the book Beneath the Surface with John Hargrove, the one that I'm using
for a lot of this, he pointed out that SeaWorld in past years had
plans to sell their orc calves to other countries, including Russia and China,
who still capture orcas from the wild to put into marine parks. And this
is something I'm not going to talk about for a long time because it's incredibly
depressing and for the sake of time. But there are these people, I
guess that we can call them a group of people called the Taji dolphin hunters.
I'm probably mispronouncing that because it's a Japanese word. But every six months
they capture and or kill a few hundred cetaceans, So like dolphins, whales
porpoises each year for either their meat or for captivity, but many of them
die from like the stress of attempting to be captured. And I also want
to point out that a lot of these dolphins captured, or whales or whatever,
but specifically the dolphins are the ones who are captured for captivity are sold
into tourists swim with dolphin attractions. So I just want people to think of
that before you go on vacation swim with a dolphin, think of how they
got there, because it's probably incredibly dramatic and that's true awful. Yeah,
and let's not go back in the archives and call me out. I have
said that I would love to do a swim swim with the dolphins thing in
the past on this podcast before, so call me out for you'd like I
can, except that was wrong. I think I thought I was wrong at
the time, and so I still want to do Yeah, yeah, I
mean Nick and I will be fully transparent. After watching Blackfish, I was
like, yo, swimming with an orca looks so cool. It's dope.
It's so dope, no cool with a job that is like no wonder.
These people go along with it, like I fuck, I get it.
They look so cool doing it, But now that I know more about it,
I'm like, you couldn't be me. They're all fit, like they're
they're all hot, and they're all putting on a performance like dude, good
for you guys. It's fucking dope. Yeah. The reason I mean,
first of all, I don't want to be killed by an orca, but
second, like the physicality pass, I couldn't be me. No, I
mean, they were like full blown gennas like they are. They're legit.
You gotta be if you're if you are like surfing on a killer whale and
being shot into the air by one, Yeah, you gotta be pretty fucking
fit. Yeah, oh yeah, I could do it, Okay, stooped
cannonballs off the nose of a fucking whale the splashmal whalers from me, You
have no idea. And I'm not even going to get into the infamous killer
whale who was captured recently, well in recent times, Morgan. Have you
heard of her? Morgan the killer Whale? No, not at all.
God, So she was rescued from the wild by Dutch people because she was
seen to be like either she was beached ors like, there was some indication
that she wasn't doing well like legitimately in the wild. So she was supposed
to be rehab and then released back to her pod according to the laws there,
but instead they conveniently claimed that they had trouble identifying her pod. So
she was given to SeaWorld and sent to their park in Spain and has since
been bred with a whale that we're going to talk about later. And they
it's a huge controversy because they were like, obviously SeaWorld just wanted new blood
basically from the wild, and she was super valuable. So they are keeping
her. And there is this entire organization called Free Morgan dot org which I
will link in the episode description that is fighting for her to be released.
But she is still in captivity to this day and it's been like ten years.
I don't see how that's legal. I don't know how the fuck they
got that through the courts. That's insane. Yeah, and there's some records
online saying like yep, nope, the way that SeaWorld got her was completely
legal, but it seems so sketchy. Oh wait, what would the require
them to positively identify her pod? Be like with something out that like literally
have eyes on them at all times until from the moment they get hurt until
the moment they put them back, like you lose sight of them for twenty
minutes, Like they can go anywhere. And there's multiple pods of whales,
like obviously you can't identify the exact one, but like, let the bitch
out, let her go find them herself. What jesus? Yeah, I
know they're acting as if she like wouldn't be able to, like even if
she was in the vicinity of them, contact them somehow, like they have
long range communication. It's so dumb. Yeah, I know, it's a
really terrible excuse. So, speaking of that, how did SeaWorld obtain their
orcas in the first place. So we talked a little bit about how they
used to capture them in the wild, But now let's go back to the
beginning. SeaWorld was first founded in nineteen sixty five, and their first star
was and still is, the infamous Shamoo. Homie. Shamoo was the first
killer whale we know to be inten captured for captivity. And there's three others
that had been on displaying captivity, but they had been caught in nets accidentally
or had been injured or ill in some way like kind of like we were
talking about like they were legitimately rehab cases because humans fucked with them somehow and
they were gonna die. Some people fix them but couldn't release them for whatever
reason. And then Shamou, they were like, be cool, if we
had that, we we'll keep this one. Now, this one's smart,
We'll keep this one. Make money off that one. So she had actually
been caught to be a companion for a male captive orcan named Namu. So
Shamu's name literally just meant friend of Namu, Shamou Namo. This is how
they do all their their show whales that like, all the females are Shamo
and all the males are Namu, like whenever whenever they're performing, like that's
the name of that they go by. I don't think, well, usually
the public doesn't really know the names of the orcs when they're performing from what
I could ascertain from the book, But basically they were like, yeah,
every whales related to Shamo in some way, which isn't They'll probably say their
name the beginning of the show, like, oh, this is so and
so, and they just kind of keep moving. Shamu's great great Graham maybe
yeah, sure, yeah, yeah. Anyways, some asshole named Ted Griffin
owned an aquarium way back in the day and had a dream of swimming with
orcas, and he is the one that owned Namu, and he was responsible
for Namu's capture from the wild while Namu's family tried to free him from the
net that he was stuck in. So basically, Namu got stuck in a
fishing net and they shipped him off to captivity even though his family was actively
trying to like get him out of the net. He didn't get stuck.
They hunted him down and captured him in a net. Right, Yeah,
that's your opinion. But was it a wrong opinion? Who's to say?
Well, you just said that he was he was responsible for cap capturing him,
right, I think he was responsible for putting him in captivity. It's
like a little unclear because Shamu was quote the first one intentionally caught. Okay,
you know what I mean. It's like one of those Yeah, yep.
So Shamu herself was caught off the waters of the Puget Sound in Washington
in October of nineteen sixty five when she was just three years old, fourteen
feet long and two thousand pounds. Damn. Her mother had been harpooned to
make it easier to catch her because the smaller whales aka the like children whales,
were cheaper to transport, so they were the ones that were targeted.
Makes sense, And Shamou stayed with her mother's body for as long as she
could before she was ripped away by the humans. That's so sad. That's
so fucking sad. She was sold to Ted Griffin for eighty k eighty thousand
dollars for a whale? Is that a lot or not a lot? I
can't understand by a reaction. Really, it's nothing like I I mean,
obviously all the cost is in the care of it, but still like that
is insane? Can we buy one? First of all, that was in
the sixties, so I don't know what the relation movie. Also, you
have learned nothing already. We're like twenty minutes and no, you can't have
a fucking way. I mean no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, you're not seeing my point. We could save the
whale after we spoke it, Nick, I think there's this organization that you
should work for. Is a Peter talk about it after? No? Opposite.
So, despite Ted's plan to make Namu and Shamou besties, they did
not get along and that's why she was sold to SeaWorld in California. But
Namu himself did not live long in captivity anyways. He was in captivity for
less than a year before he contracted a bacterial infection and continually rammed his head
against the side of his tank until he drowned. Oh no, we commit
suicide kind of. Some people are like, I think his bacterial infection made
him go crazy basically, but also who's to say what happened there. So
Shamu was used in shows in parks, and it was the main thing that
attracted people to SeaWorld because everyone wanted to see this performing orca of course,
yes makes sense until April of nineteen seventy one, when Shamu was being used
in a promotional photo shoot with one of SeaWorld's secretaries who was also a model
on the side. I guess who was supposed to ride around on her back
in a bikini. After the third on Shamou, the whale stopped following commands
and the woman fell into the water. Shamu bit the woman on her lower
torso and limbs, refusing to let her go for minutes. And the difference
here is that, like most of the SeaWorld trainers are like we said,
incredibly fit and really good at diving, this model we don't know if she
was a good swimmer or not, so who's to say how long she can
hold her breath. So the model spent a few days in the hospital but
got over one hundred stitches, and she sued SeaWorld for the incident. The
lawsuit revealed that Shamu had bitten two people before, but the model had not
been informed of the risk. Very good, And four months after this,
Shamou got a hormone imbalance that led to blood poisoning that allowed bacteria into her
uterine lining, which ended up killing her. Oh no, and this rarely
ever happens to wild orcas, and she was just nine years old. Shamou,
the most famous way in the world, died of a freaking uterine infection.
I bet people have no idea. No, it's so old young,
because when I think of Shambu, I think like, oh, man,
they must have had her for like sixty years. But no, that's what
they want. That's why, that's why they keep reusing the name. That's
why they use it as a stage name. Yeah, probably make her live
on because you think that it's just the same whale for years and years and
years and years. Which is that better is a worse? I have no
idea. Yeah, Now, let's take a step back and talk about wild
versus captive orcas before we get more into the attacks that we're going to talk
about today, because it's really important to go into the context of how these
whales live versus how they're supposed to be living in the wild to make you
understand why bad things happen. I'd like to first start by acknowledging the incredibly
hot debate in the academic ORCA community on how old they live to be in
the wild. How hot is the debate some people releasing scientific articles basically just
saying another scientific article is completely wrong interesting, which is yeah, in like
a really obvious way, being like this specific article sucks. Yeah, you
think we'd have a more like concrete idea yeah, you understand why in a
second. But I am going to go off of what the Whale and Dolphin
Conservation aka WDC says. They're the leading global charity for protecting dolphins in Wales,
and they say, quote, in the wild, male orcas live to
an average of thirty years, but a maximum of fifty to sixty and an
average of forty six years for females, but females can live to be eighty
or ninety years old. Jeez. Yeah. At SeaWorld, the whales typically
don't even reach their average wild lifespan, and the oldest current whale at SeaWorld
is Quirky, who is captured from the wild in nineteen sixty nine around Vancouver.
None of her offspring are alive today, but her original pod is still
out there. Oh oh, that fucking blows. So she knows more whales
out in the wild still alive than whales in her own fucking park. Yep
that she's given birth to. Ooh ooh, yeah that's flocked. Yell that
that's an yep. It is also very rare for wild orches to have a
bent or collapsed dorsal fin. If you know anything about SeaWorld, you probably
know about the whole bent dorsal fin thing, and there's like a rumor out
there or a myth. I guess that that happens to them because they get
depressed, and that's not necessarily the case, but they are probably depressed.
Yeah, so very rare for it to happen in the wild. And I
will link to a scientific article in the episode description that goes into like the
rate of collapse dorsal fins in orchest in the wild. So it's rare in
the wild. But in contrast, almost all male whales in captivity have collapsed
or floppy dorsal fins. Do we know why have they ever released? Why?
Yes? So males also have larger dorsal fins than females, so that's
probably why they have more collapsed fins than females do, because there's are physically
longer yep. And what happens is in captivity they sit motionless at the surface
a lot, mostly because like they don't have space or just can't fully submerge
for long periods of time. So the lack of support for the dorsal fin's
height and weight causes them to collapse. Oh, it's interesting, that's cool,
said well, I mean, I may just mean like the physics behind,
like holding the fin up is pretty cool. Oh true, Yeah,
I'm a big physics fan. Specifically in SeaWorld, this tends to happen when
the orchest spend their time sleeping at the surface, or when they're forced to
wait in an eight foot deep transition pool before or after shows, which we'll
get into more later too. Orc is in the wild also Tennis specialize in
different prey sources depending on where they are geographically. And for example, the
population of resident killer whales in the Pacific Northwest mainly eats salmon, and they're
called residents because they stick around the area and they hunt in large groups and
do a ton of vocalizing underwater because salmon aren't really sensitive to orches. Sounds
like it's not like a Sam's gonna hear an orcu Oh fuck it just it's
a fish. Yeah. And these Northwest resident whales are further split into like
northern versus southern groups, and they have really interesting cultures basically because they don't
breed with each other, like the southern and the northern groups typically don't interbreed.
Sometimes there'll be like random cases like Romeo and Juliet of like, ooh,
it's forbidden, but normally, like it's taboo in Orco society for them
to interbreed and intermingle. Is this where the the incest comes in? Ah?
No, So they don't incest breed in their own pods. How do
they reproduce? So what happens is and I'm gonna get into the structure more
in a minute, but families tend to stick together, and that's what creates
a pod, similar to a wolf pack. Where everyone thinks wolf pacts are
just random amalgamations of different wolves, but that's not true. It's just different
members of a family, the same family. And when the males are ready
to mate, they'll leave their pod for a little bit, go find a
different unrelated pod mate with a female, and come back. Oh that's cool.
Yeah, So it's just like leaving home for a little bit and come
back to your thing. So also, these whales in the Pacific Northwest are
the most studied orcas, and that's how we know a lot of what we
know about orcas is because of these whales. So if you live, for
example, in New Zealand, the orcas there probably have a very different culture
from the whales in the Pacific Northwest, so just keep that in mind.
So what I'm going to talk about is probably like Pacific Northwest orca centric.
But but there's also so aside from the resident orcas who hang around the same
area, there's also transient orcas that come and go from the area, and
they mainly focus on eating marine mammals other than orcas, so dolphins, whales,
seals, and these workers hunt in smaller groups and they're very silent because
they're hunting marine mammals which are more intelligent than fish, so they try to
keep quiet and sneak up on their prey essentially. But these whales are harder
to study because they're constantly on the move all over the place, whereas the
residents, it's predictable that they're going to be there at what times they so
they're easier to study basically. Yep. And then you have orcos that live
super far from the coast and sharks make up a good portion of their diet.
It's pretty bad ass to hunt sharks. That's pretty bad ass. And
let's get into how they do it, so or specifically a few orcas that
are doing it in a insane way. That's something you probably already know about
because this story's bonkers. But in November of twenty fifteen, some seven gill
shark carcasses were found on the seabed in False Bay in South Africa, and
they had like tears on them. And the following April, more carcasses appeared
on shore with tears in their pectoral areas and their livers were gone, just
the livers. Knee cropsies were performed and orca teeth marks were found, and
just the liver was gone. How would they do that? Actually, it
seems like you have to really put something into a trance that just gets liver
out, I mean, or be like fast and efficient. But oh,
is this not a story about them flipping sharks onto their back. I didn't
find that in my research, but I have heard that. Yeah, I've
heard that too. I thought for sure that that's where this was going.
I mean, maybe they do. I just personally didn't find that. Okay,
I'd have to look into that more, but thank you for reminding me
of that. Totally forgot. So this trend happened again in twenty seventeen,
where a bunch of sharks washed up with just their livers gone, and scientists
were like, what the fuck is happening. So they realized there was two
orcas hanging around the area nicknamed Port and Starboard due to the way that their
dorsal fins were shifted, basically like one leaned one way and one leaned the
other, and that's how they differentiated them. Yeah, the angle of the
dangle. Oh, I was like a bad one. Come on, you're
bad. So finally, in twenty twenty two, these orcas were caught on
drone footage off the southwestern coast of South Africa hunting the sharks, and what
they did was they would somehow precisely tear open the pectoral girdle of the sharks
and then literally suck the liver out, no shit, and leave the rest
of the shark intact like a noodle. Yeah, like a really gross noodle.
That's sick. That's so cool. Yeah, And shark livers are really
high and fat and can probably sustain a single orca for an entire day,
some researchers say, but shark livers are also really highly sought after by humans
who tend to overfish these animals, so sharks are really going through it.
Over there. Yeah, but orcas are known for this type of precision,
especially one case. In the book I read Beneath the Surface by John Hargrove,
he mentions one whale that he worked with who wouldn't like regularly go after
seagulls that landed to, you know, like swim in her enclosure, and
she would nibble away at the seagull carcasses until they were just wings attached to
a heart. Oh wow, isn't that incredible? Yeah, and also terrified
And I never thought like that kind of dexterity they do. Wow. Yeah.
Anyways, we could go down that rabbit hole for hours. So let's
get back to Captive Orgust Nick. Unless there was something you want to say
about sharks now, summary, Whales are smart, sharks are dumb. Oh
that's not nice. That's true. I mean, depending on how you quantify
intelligence. Sure, I feel when you look in like if you see the
eyes are shark like, there's just nothing going on there, Like they're just
like on autopilot, like doing what sharks do at least like whales they think,
which is terrifying, like way more terrifying than just like a fucking brainless
killer. In my opinion, Hey, sharks are still really good with Also,
we've talked about how sharks like do investigatory bites, so they're not just
like mindless out there. They're thinking about stuff in their own shark way.
They got like they got two brain cells arguing with each other as to whether
it eat it or not to eat it, and they meet in the middle
and say, Okay, let's just bite it. Nick, Is that how
you operate with your two brain cells? No? No, no, my
two brain cells are way different. I don't bite stuff usually, okay,
anyway, usually, So the five organs at Sea World San Antonio could go
through one thousand pounds of fish a day, like between all the whales,
not like one whale eating a thousan pounds of fish. I'd be a fed.
That'd be ridiculous. The ones of the while they're eating livers, that's
it. And then this one did he have a thousand pounds of fish?
Yeah? So obviously the orc is in the wild, they get to choose
different types of prey that they prefer, right, and how they want to
eat it. Apparently, But according to John Hargrove in his book, the
orcs at SeaWorld had to be taught eating etiquette because often they were fed things
that they didn't like, like squid, or they'd be given food when they
weren't hungry just to keep their weight up. And it was important for them
to eat regularly because orcs get their hydration from their food. So if they
weren't eating for whatever reason, like if they're depressed or sick or whatever,
they weren't getting hydrated because it's not like they're drinking the water that they're swimming
in. No, that's such a good point. I ever thought about that.
Yeah, And in the book Beneath the Surface, John also points out
that SeaWorld insists that they've never restricted a whale's food for not performing, and
he claims that is false. It's obviously false. Like if the whale doesn't
perform the action you want, you don't give it food. That's withholding food.
Yeah, if it does perform the action, you give it food.
Like, yeah, that's training that you do that with your dogs. Like
that's it's such a bare bones, like basic thing that I don't think that's
even like that bad. But I think the difference here is like if my
dog doesn't perform a trick, I still feed at dinner. Yeah, but
like again, like these whales are I don't think anyone's ever accused a whale
at SeaWorld of being underfed? Is my thing? Like that's I don't think
that's really a concern for anything. Oh yeah No. In his book,
he claims that some whales were like not fed nearly as much as they should
have been in like a given day. Also, besides the whole like feeding
aspect of it, SeaWorld usually restricted orches to smaller pools to sleep at night.
And they were also really strict about enforcing like eight hours at night of
no sort of sound or disruption for the orcs to sleep. Nick, how
often did you sleep, like at a given time? How many hours?
I mean not eight? Not enough? Okay, I don't know if I'm
the best example to ask that. Yeah, you're probably the worst person as
probably four to five hours a night. But like you go to bed and
then you sleep, Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. You know you
don't get up in the middle of that I and do stuff and then go
back to sleep. No, not really, well, orcas do because unlike
us humans who may sleep for eight hours and that's like what our bodies require
orcas and other cetaceans like dolphins, do not sleep like us. They are
conscious breathers, so only half of their brain is asleep at a time because
they need to stay awake to keep actively breathing or else they will drown.
So even when they're like, even when one half of their brain is asleep,
the other half is still alert and can notice you if you're walking by,
no shit, So that's why they do the complete isolation thing. I
think so because they think, like, oh my, like I don't want
to disturb the whales as they're sleeping, but this is how orcas sleep in
the wild, so like they have to be alert, yeah, and that's
not abnormal, Like it's okay for them to be alert as they're sleeping.
Yeah. But the three Sea World parks had different ways of pairing up their
whales for sleeping arrangements, but sometimes the whales to be forced to sleep alone.
And you and I when we watch Blackfish, became aware that one of
the parks before SeaWorld, Sea Land, used to make their whales sleep and
basically stalls alone in the dark for like eight hours, whereas in the wild,
orcas in a pod will actively be touching the entire time one whale stays
fully awake, and they will like do cycles of either like twenty minutes and
then go up for breathing and do some other stuff and then maybe do like
another quick sleep cycle. But it's not like uninterrupted sleep, Like they basically
take little bouts of sleeping. Yeah, as someone watches out. Yeah that's
really cool. Yeah, so another way that their life in captivity is just
abnormal and human centric. Another example of like how socially bonded they are out
in the wild. Yeah, I know, when to make them sleep alone
seem so fucking sad. This part really gets me. So now let's talk
about some medical issues that orcas in captivity have that they likely would never have
in the wild. So first, eh, God, this the whole thing
just fucking sucks. Some whales just straight up bang their heads against the pool
because they're so bored. They're so bored, they're banging their head against the
wall. Yeah, And many whales, strictly out of boredom, peel the
paint from their pools with their teeth. And John and his book remarked that
one whale seemed like she was trying to peel paint in the same shape as
the drain in her pool, who like making art out of Yeah that's interesting,
which is interesting and also so freaking excity because it's the only thing she
fucking looks at, so she has nothing else the paint. Yeah, that's
really cool, though, Like I kind of wish there was more in ful
on that. I mean, I like, I wish there was a way
for them to like make art, like legitimately, I really hate, I
really hate like discussing all these things, like are really cool by the whales
that sea world, because you never get to see them in the wild,
Like you would never see a whale trying to make art out in the wild.
Well you might, but like it'd be so impossibly hard to actually observe.
Yeah, but like the only time we can actually see these things are
when they're fucking trapped in a fucking pool. Yeah, but obviously appeeling paint
from concrete was really bad for their teeth and whales and other cetaceans, well,
whales and dolphins have one set of teeth in their lifetime, so if
you fuck up a tooth, that's it for that tooth. You're never growing
a back or anything. And this is where the bolimia comes in. So
some whales develop bulimia literally just because they were bored, so they regurgitate their
food to keep themselves busy. And there were records of younger whales learning this
behavior from elders, so it's like a passed down activity basically. Yeah.
And of course this behavior, similar to humans, would lead to a burning
of their esophagus from their stomach acid, which would eat away at the enamel
in their teeth, and thanks to obsessive rubbing on the sides of the pool
or from paint peeling or from the bolimia, they would develop teeth problems.
So the orcas would develop pinholes in their teeth that would have to be drilled
out to avoid abscesses, which could kill the whales by like allowing bacteria into
their bodies. So that like a like a root canal for people pretty much,
yeah, except because they're so dangerous, a random person can't just walk
up and perform a procedure on a whale, so the whales would have to
be artificially breached using pools that could like you know, raise the bottom of
the pool to breach them. A wooden block would be stuck in their mouth
so they wouldn't bite down on people, and their tooth would be drilled by
the orca trainers, not the vets. Fuck. That's so, that's so
nuts. Oh well, it gets worse because once a tooth is drilled every
day for the rest of that whale's life, that tooth has to be pump
full of hydrogen peroxides. Oh my god, can you imagine how painful that
is? Fuck? How do you even do that every day? What is
the process to do that every day? I don't know. But some whales
would still die from the infections from the holes in their teeth, which obviously
that's not happening in the wild. Another thing that has literally never happened or
been captured in a wild work up. A few orcas in captivity have died
from mosquito bites. What because they contracted like triple E from the mosquito bites,
which obviously has never happened the wild, because they're out in the fuck
notion they got triple E from fucking mosquitoes because they are in such small pools
and they have to be near the surface and they can't really escape being stung
by mosquitoes. That's so fucked up and being sunburned, which is not really
a thing they might have to deal with in the wild because they can escape
the radiation from the sun pretty easily. But yeah, they didnt get deep
enough. They can't get can't go deep enough. Yeah. Also, one
whale in captivity had epilepsy, which was never exhibited in the wild that we
have today. And I just want to throw this in here because I know
some people listening might be like terrified of orcas at my mom, but and
I know that we're talking about them being kind of scary in a lot of
ways. So I just want to throw this in here because I thought it
was so sweet and really goes to show how caring they can be. So,
the one whale that had epilepsy was Splash, and his best friend was
a whale named Orchid, and when he was seizing, she would carry him
to the top of the pool to breathe, and she would also put her
body between him and the walls of the pool to protect him from smashing against
the walls as he was seizing. They're so smart, I know, they're
so fucking smart. Again, terrifying but really cool. Also, a lot
of the whales developed stress related ulcers, which could lead to a ton of
other problems. And that's just like to name a few things. Like I'm
not even getting like super in depth into things, but those are things they
wouldn't even have to really worry about as much in the wild. So it's
just an incredible amount of extra stress from captivity to their health. Now let's
get into how they're structured in the wild versus captivity. So I touched on
it before, but orcas live in a matriarchal society and that still actually holds
true in captivity, just in a like it manifests in a different way.
So pods in the wild are generally family units led by the mother whale,
and she will stay close with her offspring throughout their lives, even close to
her daughters who may go off to start their own families. They'll never be
like miles and miles apart. They're still like it's basically as if you were
to move down the road from your parents when you go to have your own
kids, but you stay together. Yeah, I mean, if you learn
to hunt a very specific thing, like you're talking about the salmon, Like
you can't just go somewhere as not salmon. Yeah, and males because it's
a matriarchal society, their status in their societies entirely dependent on the females in
their lives. So depending on who your mom is depends on basically how cool
you are. Yeah. And this closeness between family units is actually evident in
captivity too, because, as mentioned in Blackfish, the dominant female orca at
SeaWorld San Diego for a long period of time was Kasaka, and she was
eventually separated from her firstborn calf to Kara, who she was so close with,
and when Takara was taken away from her to be literally shipped to a
different park, Kasaka emitted sounds never heard by humans before because there were long
range of vocals as she tried to contact her calf, but Takara had been
flown away, so she kept emitting these vocals for way longer after Takara was
gone, more than just like a few days, like, continually kept calling
out for her daughter, and just two years after her daughter was taken from
her, she was deemed too dangerous to work with. Wonder why, yeah,
seriously want to go? We're kind of fucking stress you put on the
animal there. Yeah, and speaking of that, different whales in the like
different orcas in the wild, have different ways communicating, as we talked about,
so like the transient whales don't make money vocalizations, but resident whales do,
and the noises are unique to each group. This is a huge problem
in sea world because the whales that they have are from around the world,
so it's not like they speak the same language, and they're being bred together
to make captive orcas that don't fully know either language. Yeah, and further,
a wild male orca's status, like I said, completely determined by female
orcas in his life, especially his mom, and if his mom dies,
he'll try to join a group led by like a sister, an aunt,
or a niece. But male orcas that don't have good familial ties will sometimes
try to join other loan males, but that usually doesn't last for like a
super long period of time, and males without social family groups tend to die
quickly. Oh really, so that's probably why they have a shorter lifespan in
the wild on average than females. Megas kick out then there's kind of kind
of fucked. Yeah, well, especially if it's a resident whale that hunts
in groups, Normally it would either have to learn to hunt entirely different way
or just like all the bulk of the hunting is on that whale, you
know, yeah, oh yeah. And I do want to point out that
this is more characteristic of resident males, so like a resident male is more
likely to like, like I just said, die off because they hunt in
groups and stuff, but transience. So the ones that like kind of come
and go, but like sometimes hunt alone rather than big groups like the resident
whales. Sometimes they will team up to hunt something large, like a whale.
And I know some of you have recently seen this video, but just
last year in twenty twenty two, it was confirmed that orcust sometimes hunt blue
whales, and last month, in April of twenty three, a group of
orcas was spotted hunting two adult gray whales. Nick, did you see this
video? I don't think I did, know, Okay, I'll post on
our Instagram it is. I have watched the whole thing because I am not
someone who enjoys watching animals hunt other animals because it makes me sad. But
there were thirty orcas whoa, and the footage looks like they were trying to
eat the adult whales alive. I'm sure they were. Yes, this is
not unusual because they tend to go for the tongue or the blubber, and
they like rip out the tongue and just let the whale bleed out. Wow.
But usually it's not adults. They'll go after like a baby whale,
So this is really early in the season for them, and the calf like
wasn't born yet, so they're like, fuck, might as well just go
after the big ones. But allegedly the adult gray whales eventually split up and
escaped the orcas. That's cool. Yeah, so I'll post out on our
Instagram thirty orcas. Yeah, I'm shocked any of those whales got out,
thirty of them. I know. That's horrified. It's pack of wolves.
They're like the most efficient fucking killers on the planet, sucking out livers.
Holy crap. Yeah. It really goes to show you, like, whales
are pretty fucking badass. Yeah, absolutely, just huge, just fucking massive.
So trying to eat a building yeah, such a good yeah. Oh
boy. So, anyways, as you could probably guess by now because of
the ways that we talked about, SeaWorld captures their whales in the ways that
males exist in society. SeaWorld forced a lot of male orcas to be orphans.
They then threw these males into tanks with females who would beat the crap
out of them, especially if they couldn't communicate and speak the same language.
And even more, aggression like that isn't really observed in the wild in orcas,
like sometimes young calves will rake their teeth across another whale, but aggression
like that is usually discouraged by the matriarch, So the orcas essentially learned to
not have a violent outbursts, similar to humans. How you teach your kids
not to like punch and kick people when they're upset. Orcas also do that
with their young ye And although there can be conflicts within pods in the wild
and across different pods, they have an entire ocean to away from each other,
but not at SeaWorld because teeth raking between whales is common, and like
we saw in Blackfish, whales would even be raked during a show and appear
bloody in front of a crowd. Also, we touched on earlier the whole
like wild whales don't really do the whole incest thing on purpose. Most animals
try to avoid incest because genetically it's a nightmare and it's like a taboo and
orchest society like they don't like that's fucked up, similar to human society.
It's like, please don't do that. Yeah, because they're intelligent enough to
realize it's not good. Kno gonna work. Yeah, it doesn't happen in
SeaWorld. That seems weirder to me, like that they don't have a fucking
handle on that shit at SeaWorld. Sometimes it is forced. Oh and sometimes
it just happens. Oh see, just happening, Like I get it,
Like fucking whales and a pen forced that. That's that just seems stupid.
Yeah, like through artificial insemination. And we're supposed to be more intelligent.
Yeah, like I just said, like we are more intelligent than that,
are we? We know what happens? Yeah, you'd think so. But
when you have limited pool I guess, you know, like pool of whales
to pull from, not like yeah, yeah, I mean the pool itself
is also limited. I guess it's just so just so dumb, just so
dumb. Yeah. And I think the worst part is that a lot of
the incest that like if a male orca tried to mate with a female that
he was related to, it was often a immature female who was not even
able to breed yet, which is worse. Yeah, oh oh oh interesting,
it's extra extra gros. Also, I have nowhere else to say this,
but I just want to say it. Female orcas live long enough that
they can go through menopause. And also, there has been homosexuality observed in
orcas. Nature is gay. Moving on nature is gay. I just gotta
throw that in whenever I can. I think nature would be by because they
still need to reproduce to make more animals. Hey, gays, I mean
buye is the type of gay? Right? I have no idea and seah,
sorry you're not the expert. Anyways. The biggest difference in my eyes
between orcas in captivity and orcas in the wild is that orcas in the wild
have never killed a human, which is insane because they could at any given
time. They could whenever they want, and they choose to not do violence.
Consider yourselves lucky. Especially in his book, John Hargrove points out that
each interaction with a whale at sea world all the way down to how slowly
or quickly they would eat is documented. An aggression in any way has to
be reported, but there's no record of wild orcas attacking humans. That of
course is not acknowledging the series of boats sinkings by orcas that have been happening,
which we talked about one of our episodes previously. Yeah, so orcas
have been attacking boats recently in the Strait of Gibraltar, and it's still happening
as recently as May tewid Wow. Yeah, And you can join the Facebook
group Orca Attack Reports to follow along with it. There's thirty k people in
that group. I'm a member of it. I will link to it in
our show notes. But basically people report like, hey, I went through
this area on my boat, didn't see a whale. Or people will be
like, hey, whales absolutely tore apart my boat. I am now missing
a problem. But there's a lot of hot debate in that group where some
people are like, these whales deserve to be killed, so like that's just
that is a disaster waiting to happen. So oh yeah, gotta follow along.
Yeah. Whenever you have wild animals interacting with humans, it's usually not
a good thing. Yeah, And anyways, so keep it, keep an
eye on that. Yeah, elites to bad shit at least, like if
they haven't attacked somebody. Like this is like how it starts. They start
fucking with your boats and then eventually they get bored and start going for people.
We'll see how it plays out. I mean, it's gotta happen eventually,
like it just by pure numbers, by chance, it's gonna happen eventually.
Yeah. Maybe any of you who know anything about captive orcos will know
the main whale will be talking about now, which is Tillicombo. When SeaWorld
was no longer allowed to trap orcas for profit in the Pacific Northwest, they
moved to capturing whales around Iceland, and that is where Tillicomb was captured.
It was November of nineteen eighty three and Tillicomb was two years old when he
was taken from his mother, and he was initially sold to an aquarium I
mentioned earlier, Sealand, where he was regularly beaten up by two female orcas
there. And like I said before, with that place, Sealand, he
was one of the whales kept in basically a stall for up to fourteen hours,
and he was a massive whale. At his biggest, he ended up
being twenty two feet long and twelve thousand, five hundred pounds or five thousand,
seven hundred kilograms. He was the biggest in captivity right at least at
a time. Yes, I also found today that the largest ever recorded orca
was twice his size, No fucking way. Yeah, not in captivity,
but like in general, the largest orca yeah, is twice tillicomb size.
Are there photos of that? I found like a diagram showing like size comparisons,
but I haven't seen a picture. I mean, ay, look that
up. Yeah, I know me too. Oh oo. So on February
twentieth, nineteen ninety one, Tillicomb was in a tank with two other whales
at sealand when one of their trainers, Kelty Burne, slipped and fell into
the tank the orcas were in. Although all three orcas reacted to her falling
in, it was Tillicomb that grabbed her by the foot and repeatedly submerged her.
Kelty was heard screaming for help and saying she didn't want to die,
but no one could go in to help her even after she went unconscious,
because obviously she was the orca trainer, not like other people are trained with
orcas, let alone to jump in and save someone from an orca. As
far as I know, Kelty's death was ruled a drowning and a quote accident,
but she was a competitive swimmer. This was Tillicomb's first incident. First
year after that, Sealand went bankrupt. Wonder why. And Tillicomb was sold
to SeaWorld, who was all too excited to have him as part of their
artificial insemination breeding program, which frankly, we don't have time to get into
and I don't have the mental capacity to talk about, like the horrible trauma
that comes with artificially inseminating orcas. But it's fucked up. If you want
to hear more about it, read the book Beneath the Service. It's really
bad and now you're breeding a while as a history of aggression towards humans into
more whales. His sperm was sent to other SeaWorld parks and around the world,
to other parks like the SeaWorld associated park in Spain, Lauro Park.
Do you know what the stud fee was? I don't think they had one,
because it was just there's something to other parks. I bet they was
selling the DNA, you know, believe it or not. I didn't look
into how much whales sperm goes for, but I'm sure you could find that
information somewhere. I mean, it's got to be ridiculous. I mean,
you hear of stud fees from horses being like hundreds of thousand dollars, like
millions of dollars, so I feel way would be astronomical. Maybe Anyways,
So when Tillicomb got to SeaWorld, his trainers were told that a trainer had
accidentally drowned at the last part he was at, but it was not revealed
to them that he played a part in it. And then there was July
sixth, nineteen ninety nine, twenty seven year old Daniel Dukes hid in SeaWorld,
Orlando's park until after closing, and at some point during the night he
snuck into Tillicombe's enclosure, although allegedly there is no footage even though the whales
are monitored twenty four to seven. The next morning, when keepers went to
Tillicom's tank, a naked Daniel Dukes was on Tillicomb's back as Tillicomb was swimming
around. What a way to present your trophy. The man was also castrated
by the whale and had multiple lacerations and puncture marks from the whale's teeth all
over his body. This was a really odd case for you know, multiple
reasons, especially because the whales are allegedly checked on throughout the night, like
every few hours. But no other people noticed the dead man and no security
cameras caught it. According to SeaWorld, Yeah, I mean that's just a
lie. Like there's camera footage of this happening, probably multiple angles of this
happening, And I'll tell you all right now, everything we're about to talk
about, there is camera footage of oh yeah, like the girl being ruled
at drowning, Like there's video of it that you see in Blackfish yep,
And there are eyewitnesses who talk about it in Blackfish. Yeah. Like,
that's just insane that they get away with doing that kind of shit. So
SeaWorld was quick to label Daniel as a mentally unstable man and claim that it
was in accidental drownding sound familiar, Yeah, I'm you know what, like
if we're gonna be jumping into cages with fucking wild animals like oh, I
mean absolutely he was in the wrong, but also SeaWorld like you could acknowledge
that he was killed by a whale. Yeah, they're definitely covering it up.
But it's just like, what are you doing? I mean, no
one's gonna like if Nick walked into a tiger enclosure and a tiger ripped him
apart, No one would be like Nick accidentally got torn apart a tiger killed.
No, I wouldn't expect that it would be on my side, like,
yeah, of course he's fucking dead. Yeah, yeah, obviously.
Yeah. So basically, if you haven't caught on, SeaWorld is just not
acknowledging that the orcs are capable of doing anything bad because it would look bad
if they acknowledged that the whales could kill people and were aggressive. Yeah,
and they're getting away with it. So at this point, Tillicombs killed two
people. He is still being used in shows, he is still doing water
work with trainers, which includes trainers swimming and doing tricks with him, and
his sperm was still being used around the world for breeding programs. Now,
let's make pit stop to Loo Park in Spain, the SeaWorld associated park,
even though they claim that's not what it is that they're it's a sister park
to SeaWorld. Ooh, this sounds fun. So trainers were there in two
thousand and nine, and that's like the year that we're gonna talking about here,
But there were the trainers there at the time were much less experienced than
SeaWorld trainers because this park was pretty new, and many of the whales that
they had in Laura Park had never been in the water with people before,
like they'd never done water work before, So they flew in trainers from SeaWorld
in America to help the trainers in Spain learn how to do stuff. Alexis
Martinez was twenty nine and he had been working in the park since two thousand
and four, and he was considered one of, if not the most experienced
orchit trainer the park had. Also, I've heard his name pronounced a few
different ways, but the most common way I've heard it pronounce is Alexis,
So that's how I'm going to be saying it. On December twenty fourth,
two thousand and nine, Alexis was working with a whale named Keto. So
do you remember that whale I mentioned at the beginning of the episode. Morgan.
Yeah, since this incident, she's been bred with Keto. Just keep
that in mind. Anyways, Alexis was doing a rehearsal with Keto and Keto
didn't perform a few behaviors correctly, so instead, like if the whales didn't
perform a trick perfectly, the trainer wouldn't give them a fish, and instead
they would stare at the whale for a few seconds before moving on to either
try again or try something different, essentially letting it sink into the whale that
they didn't do something correctly. They give a stink eye, not even a
stink guy, just like staring at them like I needed you to do this
thing and you didn't. Get shit. Yeah, like just acknowledging that they
weren't being rewarded because they didn't do something right. Yep. So Alexis was
in the pool with Keto and he asked a trainer on the edge of the
pool to call Keto over. So Keto went over, you know, did
the thing correctly, so he was given a ball of ice as a treat
and he seemed calm, so he was sent back to Alexis in the middle
of the pool for more training. Alexis tried to do something called a stage
haul out with Keto, where he grabbed the whales rostrum and was led underwater
in a way, but Keto took him deeper than normal, and the trainer
at the side of the pool, Brian used an emergency tone to call Keto
over, and it worked because he realized that something was going on that could
turn out to be bad, so Brian told Alexis to swim towards a landing
area to get out of the pool, and noticed that Keto was watching Alexis.
Also, because orca is fun fact, even if they're like facing one
direction, they can move their eye entirely back to look behind them. No
shit, yeah damn. It's also noted that Keto was not rewarded with fish
for responding to the emergency call, so he did the right thing and didn't
get rewarded. I'm not sure if this was on purpose, or the trainer
was just like so focused on helping Alexis that he forgot yeah, or maybe
he like realized that Keto wasn't fully paying attention to him didn't want to reward
him for like half asked coming over kind of, I guess, yeah,
or he went too deep so he doesn't get the reward. Like there's I'm
sure they could spin that in a thousand different ways. Yeah, so Brian
asked Keto for a hand target again, but as Keto saw Alexis swimming away,
he broke away from the trainer and rushed after Alexis. Keto grabbed Alexis's
leg and brought him to the bottom of the pool. The other trainer started
slapping the water and banging his fish bucket, which were usually signals for the
whale to return to the trainer. Keto came up for a breath, but
then quickly returned to Alexis at the bottom of the pool. As I mentioned
before, this entire incident was caught on video, and at one point,
as Keto is dragging a Lexus along underwater, Alexis comes into frame and stares
directly at the camera, but his body is limp and his eyes are wide
and he was dead. Oh. Also, before I even continue, like,
this was an incident that was talked about at the other SeaWorld parks,
so the other Orcha trainers had to watch this video. I don't think they
showed the video in Blackfish. They talked about the gentleman through. Don't think
they showed the video, no, because they probably don't want to show you
like a dead person in the whale's mouth, Like I'm sure there's yeah,
I'm sure SeaWorld wasn't quick to release that. So no. Yeah, so
ned had to be used to get Keto away from Alexis, and a trainer
jumped in the pool once Keto was removed to get Alexis's body, but it
was so logged with water that it took like thirty seconds to get him up
from the bottom of the pool, and there was also reportedly massive amounts of
blood at the scene. In thirty seconds is a long fucking time when you
have a whale in the same pool, separated by a net that it can
jump over. No. I think it was like he was taken out of
that pool and like directed to another pool and probably barricaded out. Okay,
okay, actually yeah, because it was reported too that when they tried to
like close the gate to get him into another pool, he shoved his head
between the gate. Oh he was pissed. Yeah, So classically, SeaWorld
claimed that Alexis had panicked when Keto grabbed his legs and drowned. But uh,
usually there's not a shit ton of blood when you drown usually not usually
not no, because usually water goes in. It's not like you're heavylo.
Yeah. Yeah, So an autopsy revealed that Alexis did drown. However,
it was caused by quote mechanical asphyxiation due to compression and brushing of these thoracic
abdomen with injuries to the vital organs meaning crushed. His chest was crushed.
Yes, both of his lungs collapsed, some ribs in his sternam were fractured,
multiple organs were damaged, and his liver was lacerated. Oh god,
it's important for me to note here that this wasn't play. Orcas can echo
locate and essentially like assess the placement of your organs like your heartbeat. They
can echo locate and know that you're pregnant. So it's not like they don't
know what they're doing. Yeah, I can't very inceeled in animals, they're
making an active choice, Like there is scientific research on their brains that show
that they can make conscious choices. And that's what this was, and that's
what any active aggression is, a conscious choice by the organ It's not like
an instinct, it's a choice. Yep. So water work with Orcas was
temporarily banned across all Sea World sites after that, but quickly resumed except in
Laura Park, where it's been prohibited ever since because the Spanish government was like,
nah, never again. One is enough bad idea. Yeah, now
let's get back to tillicombe just a few months after Alexis's death. So February
twenty fourth, twenty ten, exactly two months after Alexis's death, forty year
old Don Branshaw, one of SeaWorld's most experienced trainers, had just performed Dining
with Shambou show at SeaWorld Orlando. No one was allowed to do water work
with Tillicomb at this point because of the previous human deaths he was involved in,
and that protocol was still being followed to that day. Tillicum had been
asked to perform a few behaviors and did so incorrectly, but overall was still
exhibiting what was considered like good behavior, Like he wasn't showing any signs of
aggression or frustration, so they were still like doing stuff with him, and
Don had a really good relationship with Tillicomb and knew how to get the best
behaviors out of him and how to keep him happy. So after the show,
Don walked over to the pool edge and laid down to pet Tillicum as
part of like a reward for him. And the pool ledge that she was
on was shin high water, so it's not like she was swimming around with
him. She was on a ledge that was in the water. After this,
Don was supposed to send Tillicum down to a glass viewing area in the
pool below to entertaining visitors where like people could go and look through the glass
at the whale, and the other senior trainer was down there waiting to receive
Tillicom behind the glass. Because normally there's at least two trainers and someone spotting
the whale to help communicate between the two trainers as to what the whale is
doing at any given times, they're constantly watched. The other trainer down by
the glass knew something was wrong when she saw an unexpected splash. According to
videos and eyewitness accounts, Don was petting Tillicum when he grabbed her arm and
pulled her into the pool. The only other trainer up at the pool at
the time was not qualified to work with Tillicum in the water or just in
general, and all they could do was sound in an underwater emergency alarm in
an attempt to get Tillicum away from down, and the sound of the emergency
alarm called over other senior trainers who also tried to call Tillicum away, but
it didn't work. He struck down multiple times with his head and dragged her
around underwater by her arm, her neck, shoulder, hair, and her
leg at various times. An emergency net was deployed, as is typical with
emergency protocol because the whales tend to be afraid of the nets, but the
net got caught on some decorative rocks so it didn't have the full effect.
And there were two back pools. I know, of course, it's like
every time we talk about guns misfiring when people go to shoot something that's trying
to kill them. There was also two backpools attached to the show pool,
but they were being occupied by other whales who were very upset at what Tilicum
was doing, so they were refusing to move out of their pools. The
rescue team used another net to shepherd him towards their medical pool that I mentioned
earlier, the one that's only eight feet deep and as the floor that raises,
essentially artificially breaching the whales. But with each pool that he was shepherded
into, Tilicum got more and more agitated and more possessive of Dawn, shaking
her in his mouth, emitting vocalizations the entire time that indicated he was very
upset. Oh Man. So forty five minutes after Don was pulling into the
water, rescuers were able to artificially breach Tillicumb in the medpool with Don still
in his mouth. Laura Serovic was one of the other very experienced trainers that
worked with Tillicumb and had a good relationship with him. But she also happ
one of Don's very best friends and they shared like matching friendship rings together and
she was on the other side of the park when this incident began, and
when she heard what happened, she ran over. As Laura arrived, Tillicum
was being shepherd in between pools, and she noted that the presence of all
the people was making him more upset, so she told people to back off,
essentially, and when he was breached and he calmed down slightly, or
sorry when he was beached and he calmed down slightly. Laura walked over to
him and in a strong voice told him to settle down and he had a
net draped over his body or a knelt down at Tillicum's mouth and cradled Don's
torso in her arms as she tried to coax Tilicum into releasing her friend.
The other rescuers tucked another net around his rostrum, and he finally fully released
Don to Laura. Laura carried her friend away from onlookers and tried using a
defibrillator, but it was no use. Don had been scalped. She was
missing an arm, and it was found in the back of Tillicum's mouth.
It was the same arm that had the ring on that she shared with Laura.
Don's spinal cord had also been severed and her ribs were broken. After
this incident, SeaWorld did not release an incident report, which they did after
Alexis died, but not after Don died. Instead, they insisted that Don's
death was her fault because they suggested that her ponytail had touched the water,
which enticed the whale. In his book, John Hargrove says it's extremely unlikely
that's what happened because the whale are specifically trained to be desensitized to ponytails to
avoid that situation entirely, and he believes it was simply an active aggression on
till it comes apart. Yeah yeah, like, yep, you listened off
the injuries, like yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't rip off an
arm or scalp someone unintentionally. The scalping I can almost get if he was
literally grabbed the pointsail and ripped it off, So that's not it's not even
what happened. No, like he grabbed her by the arm at first,
right, Yeah, But I mean it's just it's it's insane that they get
away with just making up bullshit and people are like, oh yeah, oh
sure, trust me. No one believed this. I mean, this is
what Blackfish is all about, and this is what Sue World. Uh,
Sue world, this is what Sea World it is. Truly, that's what
they got pissy at Blackfish about because they were like, Tillicomb didn't attack don
It's like, uh yeah, we'll get into that. I don't know how
you can say that he didn't attack her like he ripped her apart. Yeah,
regardless of everything, regardless of all the drownings and everything that they're talking
about, like what happens to the people. You can't just be like,
oh yeah, like it's whatever, it's their fault. Yeah, no,
No, they have a wild fucking animal on a pool. Yeah what are
we doing here? Yeah? And nothing like no way to help the people,
like nets get a fucking hardpoon gun or some shit. You gotta put
a hardpooned that thing's brain, like it's killing somebody, it's killing somebody,
you know. I thought that was really interesting too. You and I talk
a lot about other animals at zoos and stuff that have to be put down
because they're attacking a person. That has never happened with the orchid. I
think it's literally just because they which is why they make so much money,
that they're not going to kill one of the whales for killing somebody. The
moment you kill one of them, you have to release solve them, like
people would absolutely lose their shit, as they should. Yeah, like yep,
because people care more about the orches lives than human lives. So I
mean the company certainly does exactly yeah, and the public does like no one's
they still have whales. Yeah, I mean there's plenty of members of the
public who care about the people that they have died. Actually, the public
people are smart. The public is stupid. An individual is smart. A
group of people is stupid, like they just accept it. I mean people
that still go to SeaWorld, Yeah for sure, I mean exactly. It's
also entirely possible that people that go to sea World don't know about this,
but the ones who do they probably don't. Yeah. Anyways, after this
incident with Don, first of all, Tillicum was really upset because he loved
Don, but also he killed her well yeah, which is very complicated.
His opinion on her doesn't really matter anymore. No, But what I'm trying
to say is like after she died, he was depressed because the person and
also he knew that her body was there, Like he didn't want to leave
that medpool because he could still see her and was upset and after her death
like got depressed. Basically, we can't be sad for the whale that killed
the lady. We can't. Oh yeah, absolutely can yes, Okay,
I think the will should be dead, so I don't I understand what you're
saying. I know it's probably gonna be a super unpopular opinion with people,
but I it is confusing to me. How like Harambe, for example,
he wasn't actively attacking that child that got in his enclosure the gorilla. If
you don't, if you listening, don't know who Harambe was. If you,
if you're one of the five people in a plan, doesn't know who
Rame is. Yeah, but Harabe was killed because there was a person in
his enclosure and he could have killed them. But these orcas maybe it's because
this, like they have people actively in their enclosure interacting with them, but
they've never killed a whale for like being actively attacking a person, which is
really interesting. Crazy, it's so crazy. So anyways, after this,
Tillicum was mostly kept in isolation, and in the following months he became very
sick, leading to him being heavily medicated and at one point he was so
sick that he's lost a thousand pounds. Oh yeah, oh my god.
But he still appeared in shows, though not for long, and he didn't
do many things. And this really breaks my heart because that means his life
in captivity got even more boring. Oh yeah, yeah, And you know,
Nick and I talked about this in the Blackfish Bonus episode. But the
hardest part for these trainers, like many of them try to ignore what is
happening because they think that they're helping the whales. And if a trainer leaves
SeaWorld, because they know that it's fucked up, it's just hurting the whale
because the whales form relationships with them and like love their trainers. Yeah,
so you're no, the whale's not going anywhere, like no, and you
leaving SeaWorld and like speak nut against them, although great, you don't want
to be a part of it anymore. Like the whales still gets punished in
the end, which fucking sucks. Yeah, and that's what happened. You're
basically a part of these whales family group, Like you're a part of their
artificial pot as it is, so yep. Yeah, Like you leave them
like it's gonna be the same as if they lost a family member. Yeah.
Yeah, So these trainers are kind of like what the fuck are they
supposed to do? Yeah. So in January sixth, twenty seventeen, Tillicum
died, reportedly of a bacterial infection. And he sired twenty one offspring in
captivity. He was their most prolific reader. Yeah, hell yeah. So
SeaWorld voluntarily suspended all water work with orcas following Don's death. But thanks to
a lawsuit with Osha, where SeaWorld was found guilty of putting their workers that
unnecessarily risk, they really couldn't do this anymore, Like legally they cannot let
trainers swim with orcas the ways that they used to. Specifically, the judge
and the case said quote SeaWorld insists it did not recognize the hazard post by
working in close contact with killer whales. The court finds this implausible and no
reasonable person would conclude that whether the trainers were fully immersed in swimming with the
killer whales for a waterwork show performance or standing poolside or on a slide out
for a dry work show performance, SeaWorld knew its trainers were at risk for
being struck or drowned by a killer whale, and then like Osha or sorry.
SeaWorld tried to appeal this basically, and the Court of Appeals judge was
more brief, saying statements by SeaWorld managers do not indicate that SeaWorld's safety protocols
and training made the killer whale safe. Rather they demonstrate SeaWorld recognizes that the
killer whales interacting with trainers are dangerous. And she also wrote that SeaWorld acted
you responsibly and quote violated its duties as an employer. That is a funny
take for them to have to try and like say like, oh, we
didn't know that this was a dangerous thing while you have all these safety procedures
in place. Yeah. Also you're logging aggressive incidents. There is a log
of all of the times orcas have basically attacked trainers, but the trainers didn't
die. And if you watch Blackfish you can see them being attacked. We
watched one of the whales breach and land on its trainer. Yeah, they
do kind of like a like a background shot of the list, like kind
of like have it scrolling through a background and a shot a long list.
That's a long fucking list. But they got back to it a couple of
times. Yeah, if you guys are interested, read the book Beneath the
Surface. He goes into it a lot, and he's also very heavily involved
in Blackfish. Yeah. I'm not sure if we said that. Yeah.
John Hargrove, the author of the book, is in blackfish yep. So.
Also because water work was suspended, that meant that the trainers who did
waterwork with orcas got a five dollars hazard pay essentially, and when water work
was suspended, SeaWorld fucking took that away from them. They already made pennies.
When John Hargrove started, he made six fucking dollars an hour as an
Orcha trainer. That's nuts. They make like no money, and SeaWorld basically
punish them for SeaWorld getting in trouble for making their work more dangerous. The
dude handing out popcorn in the stadium is making just as much as the person
working with the whales. Probably insane, not far from it, yep.
So I could not I did a quick goog couldn't find any real updates on
whether or not SeaWorld has updated their facilities in the wake of all this,
and they've made some claims that they were going to. I think they've done
some work to the pools that like you could raise the bottoms, but I
haven't seen any big changes made. And the big push that people who are
activists for this kind of stuff, like to get the killer whales out of
captivity. They basically they everyone acknowledges SeaWorld orcas cannot be released back into the
wild. And SeaWorld may say that they're doing conservation work by breeding orcas,
but they're breeding orcas that could never be released into the wild because they don't
belong to a pod and don't speak the language of any pod out there.
Yeah, no, it would never, It would never happen. You just
have to put them. They can so a free range pen pretty much like
in the ocean somewhere, but they can never leave like they always have to
be fenced in. That's exactly what people want, is like open ocean pens
for them until they die basically. Yeah, and who the fuck knows how
long that's going to be, Like, it'd be an unbelievably expensive thing to
do, so they won't do it. The youngest orca SeaWorld has there is
only eight. Yeah, and they can live to be in their sixties,
seventies, eighties. Yeah, it would be more financially stable for them to
keep them in Sea World because they're die quicker. Yeah, they just never
re replied to the population. Yeah, I mean it's it's so fucked up.
It's so fucked up. But that's like what zoos are, Like,
we can't release the lines that are in zoos unto the wild, so it's
similar. Yeah, you're not wrong, just that these are like some of
the most intelligent animals on the planet that we're doing it. So yeah,
which is so fucked up. Yeah, I'm going to make a Q and
a basically section. So normally for Spotify listeners, you know, I sometimes
throw a poll for an episode. Yeah, I'm now going to for this
episode make an open comment one. And I want to know if this episode
changed your perception of Sea World or if it made you more interested in learning
about captive orcas, because for me, like this has been so interesting.
I'm so into it, and I like want to help in any way I
can to get these orches out of captivity and to stop people from capturing wild
cetaceans for captivity, which definitely still happens today. Oh yeah, oh absolutely
happens. Like you said, I feel like dolphins shows are kind of like
not really talked about, but they happen a lot of places, more places
than the orchest straws. Yeah, we're not a, I didn't touch on
dolphins at all. Dolphin captivity not good. And if you would like to
learn more about cetaceans specifically like dolphins, there is a in our episode description
A'll link to a recent episode of Ologies with Ali Ward and it's all about
dolphins and cetaceans and it's so so good. So if you're into citations now,
there's plenty of stuff out there for you. This is like a whole
cult like thing. And Aali does good work. Ali's the fucking man.
Yeah, good show, good show. Yep. But that is our very
long episode on captive killer whales, and there's so much we didn't even touch
on. This is a whole beast. So I know for a fact you've
probably got to like two thirds of your notes. This is probably an entire
section you didn't even touch. I mean I left things out of my notes
too, and those twelve pages, so yeah, yeah, yeah. So
check out the episode description for more information. Definitely reach out on Spotify say
what you think. I'll be posting on social media. You can give your
comments on what you think of captive orcas and if you've visit a SeaWorld and
if your view has changed, since learning all the things you just learned.
I think a lot of people, a lot of views have changed about the
SeaWorld in the past fifteen to twenty years, which sucks because us being like,
we'll never go to sea World if they don't make money, the orct
still suffer, you know, exactly. Yeah, it's it's a zero win
situation the orcas. Yeah, the orchest in captivity will not win. The
best case scenario is that the government takes over orcas. Like, do we
have that much conference in the government to take care of these animals? I
don't exactly. Yeah, Like there's there's a No, I don't see a
happy ending for these animals that are in captivity. No don't. I don't
see when that exists realistically. Nope. No. Yeah. So that's why
I want to mention all like the quotes from the Sea World website, because
they were talking about the conservation work that you do, and I'm like,
that may be great, and you may be funneling money into conservation efforts,
but you also like actively destroyed these orchipods forever and you actively cover up people's
deaths. Yep, Like obviously, like it's not even a good cover up.
Like video exists. This isn't like nineteen forty anymore. Like everyone has
a fucking cell phone now. Yeah, it's insane. Yeah. Well that's
it, folks. If you want to learn more, check out the episode
description, comment on Spotify, or on any of our posts on social media.
You can follow us on Instagram at get out a Live Pod. On
Facebook get out a Live Podcast, TikTok, get out Alive, follow me
on Twitter at the Angreologist. You can check out our website get at a
Live Podcast dot com. I have no social social media none, Sarah great.
Thank you to my good friends second grade husband Josh Walsh for making this
intro music and Jesse for doing all of the other audio stuff, making the
incredible train social music, and editing everything to the best of visibility. You
rock. You guys are the best. We love you all. Thank you
all for your suggestions. We'll see you in two weeks with a new animal
Tack story.