There’s nothing more mesmerizing or suspenseful than watching a killer whale display the full range of its cunning, intelligence, and power to make a hefty meal of a fatally lackadaisical elephant seal. From the BBC, the apex broadcaster when it comes to nature. (Thanks to Jeff for sharing)…
Category: Diary Of A Killer Whale
Morgan Meets Skyla
My personal opinion was that a chance to return to life in the wild (with all its uncertainties) was very much the right ethical choice over a life as an entertainer and breeder at Loro Parque.
But I also think that this (so far):
Is better than this:
Orca Morgan’s Transport To Loro Parque
There is something quite extraordinary about moving orcas from one place to another. Part of it is the sophistication of the planning and the technology that has evolved to make this commonplace. Part of it is the awareness that the orca is a very intelligent and aware animal, which makes me wonder just what, exactly, an orca being transported must be thinking.
Here is what Morgan’s trip from Dolfinarium Harderwijk to Loro Parque involved on the Harderwijk side:
And here are some pictures of her arrival at the other end, where it appears she will become part of SeaWorld’s orca “collection” (full set here).
Now we wait and see how the integration into Loro Parque’s fractious group goes.
Blood In The Water (Spanish Version)
Loro Parque is again in the news, thanks to the fact that a Dutch judge has decided that the orca Morgan will be sent there rather than be returned to the wild.
So it is a good time to publish a Spanish translation of my article, “Blood In The Water,” which goes into great detail on the lives of the killer whales at Loro Parque and the tragic December 2009 death of trainer Alexis Martinez.
Many thanks to Sebi McLean, a diver who worked at Loro Parque for a time, for taking the trouble to to do the translation.
SeaWorld Rising Pool Floor Progress
Just a couple of pics of what the SeaWorld Florida G-Pool prototype rising floor is looking like these days.
These were taken November 13, by a Flickr user who comments:
Shamu Stadium at SeaWorld
Orlando, FloridaHas water in it and the back pathway is open, but not underwater viewing. Pool between underwater viewing and “ready pool” is still drained.
It’s interesting to note that the faux-rock features of G pool, which may have slowed the net deployment during the attempt to rescue Dawn Brancheau (and presumably would prevent use of a rising floor), are gone.
One other feature of the planned fast-rising pool floors is that they require the retrofitting of air lines under the pool to help drive the floors toward the surface in an emergency.
SeaWorld Vs. OSHA: Now We Wait
My report on Round 2 of the SeaWorld appeal of OSHA’s citation against SeaWorld Florida is up over at Outside Online. Here’s the lead-in:
The security guards screening visitors to the Seminole County Criminal Justice Center in Sanford, Florida, jokingly called it the “Flipper trial.” But when nine days of courtroom testimony on the intricacies and risks of working closely with killer whales drew to a conclusion on November 18, the federal administrative-law judge tasked with ruling on SeaWorld’s appeal of an OSHA citation knew he had a tough decision before him. “This is one of the most unusual OSHA hearings I have had,” said Judge Kenneth Welsch, explaining that most of the dangers he’d deliberated during the past 15 years were more commonplace, like employees tripping and falling. “I will have to consider it very carefully.”
Welsch will likely deliver his verdict sometime next Spring, so the case is now on hiatus as both sides sum up their arguments in legal briefs, and then Welsch plows through them and the hearing record to make his decision. It’s likely that whatever Judge Welsch decides, it will will be appealed further, so this movie could run for ages. But given the stakes for both sides, that is not surprising.
To complete the wrap up, here is an interview about the case that I did with Guy Raz of NPR’s All Things Considered, which aired last Friday.
The Morgan Verdict
For those who are interested, here is the Dutch court’s decision allowing the orca Morgan to be transported to Loro Parque:
More SeaWorld Orca Pregnancies?
Earlier today, I got confirmation that Kohana, at Loro Parque, is pregnant. Here is a recent photo showing her gravid profile:
Now I am also picking up whispers that SeaWorld’s Kasatka and her daughter Takara are also pregnant, via Artifical Insemination (AI) that was conducted over the summer. The donor: Kshamenk, an Argentinian killer whale.
Kasatka is a 34-year old female at SeaWorld San Diego. She was captured off Iceland in 1978, when she was about one year old, and in 2000 became the first SeaWorld female to be artificially inseminated (with sperm from Tilikum). That pregnancy led to the birth of Nakai, who is still at SeaWorld San Diego. Kasatka is also the mother of Takara (born in 1991 and now at SeaWorld San Antonio), and Kalia (born in 2004 and still at SeaWorld San Diego).
Kasatka has a history of aggressive incidents with trainers, and in 2006 dragged trainer Ken Peters repeatedly to the bottom of the pool. Trainers have not been allowed to swim with her since.
Takara, Kasatka’s daughter, is the mother of Kohana, who was born in 2002 (and if she successfully carries her current pregnancy to term will have given birth twice before she turns 13). Takara is also the mother of Trua (born in 2005 and now at SeaWorld Orlando), and Sakari (born last year and still at SeaWorld San Antonio).
The use of sperm from Kshamenk, a killer whale who was captured in Argentina in 1992 and now lives at Buenos Aires’ Mundo Marino, is a new wrinkle in SeaWorld’s captive orca breeding program. A majority of SeaWorld’s killer whales have Tilikum’s genes, and there has been a lot of concern about a genetic bottleneck within SeaWorld’s breeding pool. Training Kshamenk to give sperm donations, and using his sperm to impregnate Kasatka and Takara adds completely distinctive Argentinian killer whale DNA to the SeaWorld sperm pool.
Kshamenk lives alone at Mundo Marino:
Morgan Heading To Loro Parque
Morgan, the killer whale “rescued” in the Wadden Sea, and nursed back to health at the Dolfinarium at Harderwijk, won’t be going back to the ocean, a Dutch judge has ruled. Instead, she’ll be sent to Loro Parque, where she will join the five orcas owned by SeaWorld.
It will be a challenging transition. Loro Parque is where trainer Alexis Martinez was killed in 2009, by Keto (my story on that tragedy is here). And it is a marine park with a very unstable social grouping, with the most visible manifestation being the severe scarring on the male, Tekoa.
Loro Parque also has a young calf, Adan, who is just over a year old. And to add to the potential complexity of adding Morgan to the Loro Parque mix, there is a lot of speculation among people who follow orcas and the marine parks closely that Kohana, the mother of Adan, is pregnant again. There has been no confirmation or comment either way from Loro Parque about this. But this is what Kohana looks like these days.
I am no expert, but here are some recent videos of Kohana a friend sent me, with the following comment:
She’s starting to get chunky enough that you should be able to pick her out as being the fat one even if you can’t ID her well otherwise. She looks way too big now for it to just be some change in her weight or something.
What do you think?
UPDATE: I just got solid confirmation that Kohana is in fact pregnant. So, with the addition of Morgan, Loro Parque is headed toward seven orcas, unless they move one or more out over the next year.
How Did SeaWorld Florida Handle Waterwork After Alexis Martinez Died?
One of the key questions in the OSHA versus SeaWorld smackdown happening this week in a courtroom in Sanford, Florida is: how did SeaWorld’s parks respond to the Dec. 24, 2009 death of Loro Parque orca trainer Alexis Martinez, killed by a SeaWorld killer whale called Keto during a training session supervised by SeaWorld trainer Brian Rokeach?
It is key, because it goes to the question of whether SeaWorld was indifferent to the risks waterwork and close contact with killer whales posed to its trainers. Mike Scarpuzzi, SeaWorld San Diego’s vice president of zoological operations, testified yesterday (according to my notes) that SeaWorld Florida, where Brancheau was killed two months later, took its trainers out of the water on Dec. 25, and returned them to waterwork on Dec. 27th or so.
Today, SeaWorld Florida animal-training curator Kelly Flaherty-Clark also discussed the death of Alexis Martinez. She discussed the corporate incident report and talked about reviewing the video of Alexis’s death, captured by an underwater camera. She was critical of how Brian Rokeach handled the moments leading up to Alexis’ death, saying: “He made decisions spotting the session that I would not have made, that my team here [at SeaWorld Florida] would not have made.” Flaherty-Clark also was critical of the general level of experience of the trainers at Loro Parque, saying “I understood that the level of experience of trainers at that park did not mirror the level at my park.”
It was against this background that Flaherty-Clark said she, in consultation with SeaWorld Florida management, made the decision to return SeaWorld Florida’s trainers to the water.
When I reported the story of Alexis’ death I went to great effort to try and figure out when SeaWorld’s parks removed trainers from the water in the aftermath, and for how long. Since SeaWorld would not tell me, with the help of a friend who is a master of Flickr searches, I turned to photo evidence. What Flickr photos of SeaWorld Florida’s Believe shows, in the days after Alexiss Dec. 24 death, seem to show is that SeaWorld Florida continued waterwork on Dec. 25 and 26, removed trainers from the water for one day, Dec. 27, and had them back in the water on Dec. 28.
Of course, it is possible that the date setting on a camera might be wrong, but this photo of Dawn Brancheau, for example, explicitly says it was taken on December 25 (see the caption).
And here is a waterwork photo from Dec. 26, and another from Dec. 28.
I’ve published the full list of photos at the end of this post so you can see what you think of them, and decide what they show, yourself.
If these photos show what I think they show, then Scarpuzzi’s testimony about when SeaWorld Florida was out of the water was not quite accurate, and SeaWorld Florida waited two days after Alexis died to pull its trainers from the water, and then kept them out of the water for only one day (the other parks waited longer).
The other thing I have been wondering about how SeaWorld Florida handled the suspension and resumption of waterwork in the aftermath of Alexis’ death is: how much could Flaherty-Clark and SeaWorld Florida management have known about what happened at Loro Parque just two days after Scarpuzzi arrived in the Canary Islands to help Rokeach handle the tragedy and find out what happened?
In her testimony Flaherty Clark discussed the incident report and video, but Scarpuzzi testified (according to my notes) that he left Loro Parque, to return to the United States to brief the parks on his investigation and show the video, on Monday, Dec. 28. So by the time he arrived in Florida, it appears that SeaWorld Florida trainers were already back in the water with the killer whales. And the decision had been made, it seems, before Scarpuzzi had made his full presentation on the incident, which included the underwater video, to the training team at SeaWorld Florida.
Of course, Flaherty Clark and the management team at SeaWorld Florida may have seen a draft of the incident report before Scarpuzzi returned, or may have discussed its content with Scarpuzzi by phone. But it seems unlikely they had seen the video before ordering trainers back into he water, unless Scarpuzzi e-mailed it somehow over the weekend. I’d love to know when Flaherty-Clark first saw a draft of the incident report, and when she first viewed the video.
Flaherty-Clark also testified that she discussed the decision to return to the water, which presumably occurred Dec. 27 or the morning of Dec. 28, with the trainers who would be going back in the water. But how much could they have known about what happened at Loro Parque if they hadn’t yet been briefed by Scarpuzzi, and hadn’t yet viewed the video, as appears to be the case? And from what I learned in my reporting about how SeaWorld handled Alexis’ death, trainers learned what they know about the incident from Scarpuzzi’s briefing and the viewing of the video. I don’t believe that the corporate incident report was shared widely with trainers, or made available to trainers in the way that SeaWorld incident reports normally are.
Perhaps there are good answers to these questions. SeaWorld did not want to talk about this when I was doing my reporting, so I am piecing a timeline together from a variety of sources, and sharing the questions the timeline, if I have it straight, raises. It is a critical timeline, and the issues go straight to the heart of the courtroom battle between SeaWorld and OSHA.
Here are the photos of waterwork at SeaWorld Florida in the aftermath of Alexis Martinez’s death:
Dec. 25:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44625881@N08/4279674888/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sworrall/4388833228/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/neil_rushil/4221947595/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaxphoto/4411356791/
Dec. 26:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/breitbach/4249861535/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rxmflickr/4276198656/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/staypeach/4794099753/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fadhe2/4273561912/
Dec. 27:
No photos found
Dec. 28:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/starexplorer/4246743494/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/starexplorer/4245971115/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aimanflames/4259413407/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aimanflames/4223935304/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aimanflames/4223167005/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/starexplorer/4246745388/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25477222@N06/4245064452/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/49886501@N06/4577573028/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/starexplorer/4245972073/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/42955861@N05/4232754394/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/42955861@N05/4231983945/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eggsngrits/4241636599/
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