Tag: SeaWorld

Blackfish Blows Up

Former SeaWorld trainer John Hargrove talks killer whale's with HBO's Bill Maher.
Former SeaWorld trainer John Hargrove talks killer whale’s with HBO’s Bill Maher.

It’s been a big week, with Blackfish opening last night in LA and NYC. And I guess it was getting enough notice as the open approached that the suits at SeaWorld, or corporate owner Blackstone, got twitchy. After mostly ignoring Blackfish for the past few months and I guess hoping it wouldn’t get much public notice, SeaWorld hired PR firm 42 West to lead a campaign to blast the film. I analyze how that’s going over at Outside:

But now, with Blackfish getting good buzz and opening tonight in New York and Los Angeles (as well as in many other US cities and abroad in coming weeks), the billion-dollar theme park hasbroken its virtual silence on the film and has belatedly started to fight. In an e-mail blast to film critics last weekend that called Blackfish “shamefully dishonest, deliberately misleading, and scientifically inaccurate” (you can read SeaWorld’s complaints, and the Blackfishresponses, here) and in interviews with ABC News and the New York Times, SeaWorld is doing what it can to try to inoculate audiences and the public against the critical portrayal of how SeaWorld over the years has managed Tilikum and its captive orca entertainment business.

The challenge for SeaWorld’s PR effort, even though its e-mail broadside quoted Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s well-known aphorism on opinion and fact—“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts”—is that the facts are not really on SeaWorld’s side.

SeaWorld’s attack on Blackfish has generated so much media that I can’t come close to keeping up with the Google alerts. But if you want a sense of what sort of critical reception Blackfish is receiving, Rotten Tomatoes has a compilation of reviews.

 

A Comic’s Take On Killer Whale Training

Comedian Doug Stanhope pulls no punches….at all. You’ll cringe at points, especially in his treatment of Dawn Brancheau, but boy does he nail it.

(h/t Jordan Waltz)

Blackfish Goes Wide

After a long festival run, Blackfish is finally hitting general theaters. There is a premiere in LA tonight, and then it rolls out in selected theaters across the country.

Here’s the current schedule:

play dates

Click to see Playdates for this film.
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Opening7/19/2013
New York, NY: Sunshine Cinema 5
New York, NY: Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
West Los Angeles, CA: The Landmark 12

7/26/2013
Berkeley, CA: Shattuck Cinemas 10
Cambridge, MA: Kendall Square Cinema 9
Chicago, IL: Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema
Evanston, IL: CineArts 6 – Evanston
Maitland, FL: Enzian Theatre
Manhasset, NY: Manhasset Cinemas 3
Minneapolis, MN: Lagoon Cinema
Montclair, NJ: Clairidge Cinemas 6
Mountain View, CA: Century Cinema 16 – Mtn View
Philadelphia, PA: Ritz 5 Movies
San Diego, CA: Hillcrest Cinemas
San Francisco, CA: Century Centre 9
San Francisco, CA: Sundance Kabuki Cinemas
San Rafael, CA: Regency Cinema 6
Santa Ana, CA: South Coast Village 3
Washington, DC: E Street Cinema
White Plains, NY: Cinema 100 Quad

8/2/2013
Atlanta, GA: Midtown Art Cinemas 8
Austin, TX: Arbor Cinemas at Great Hills 8
Austin, TX: Violet Crown Cinemas
Aventura, FL: Aventura Mall 24 Theatres
Baltimore, MD: Charles Theatre
Boca Raton, FL: Living Room Cinema 4
Frontenac, MO: Plaza Frontenac Cinema
Houston, TX: Sundance Cinemas Houston
Lake Buena Vista, FL: Downtown Disney 24
Miami, FL: O Cinema
Portland, OR: Fox Tower 10
Rancho Mirage, CA: Century @ the River 15
Royal Oak, MI: Main Art Theatre
Seattle, WA: Seven Gables Theatre

8/4/2013
Gloucester, MA: Cape Ann Community Cinema

8/9/2013
Albuquerque, NM: Century 14 Downtown
Boulder, CO: Century 16
Columbus, OH: Gateway Film Center 8
Denver, CO: Chez Artiste
Las Vegas, NV: Century Suncoast 16
Madison, WI: Sundance Cinemas Madison
San Antonio, TX: Santikos Bijou Cinema Bistro 6
Santa Fe, NM: The Screen
Santa Rosa, CA: Summerfield Cinemas 5
Sarasota, FL: Burns Court
Scottsdale, AZ: Camelview 5 Theatre

8/11/2013
Albuquerque, NM: Guild

8/16/2013
Bellingham, WA: Pickford Film Center 3
Cleveland Heights, OH: Cedar Lee Theatres
Ithaca, NY: Cinemapolis 5
Kansas City, MO: Tivoli @ Manor Square
Rochester, NY: Little Theatre

8/23/2013
Charlotte, NC: Manor Theatre 2
Dallas, TX: Angelika Film Center and Cafe
Honolulu, HI: Kahala Theatres 8

8/28/2013
Gainesville, FL: Hippodrome – Gainesville

8/30/2013
Boise, ID: The Flicks 4
Dayton, OH: New Neon Movies
Knoxville, TN: Downtown West Cinema 8
Pelham, NY: Pelham Picture House

9/7/2013
Bradenton, FL: Lakewood Ranch 6

Blackfish Movie Trailer

Fresh from the kickass movie-trailer production facility. Check it:

Tilikum Back In The Day

A Tilikum “Splash” segment from the video archives of former SeaWorld trainer Jeffrey Ventre.

From the show producer: “Oh boy, where’s he going?”

Nowhere, it turns out. Tilikum has been doing this segment for almost three decades since this was shot. And a lot has happened over that period of time.

More Loro Parque PR Porn

Yet another video about Morgan, and her life at Loro Parque.


Morgan sure looks like she is living the life, doesn’t she? Let’s read between the lines.

As former SeaWorld trainer Jeffrey Ventre notes:  “it DOES appear (although no audio confirmation) that a trainer is using a whistle to bridge Morgan at about he 54 second mark. This is contrary to claims that she is deaf.”

Loro Parque trainer Claudia Volhardt also mentions that Morgan is being taught how to pee into a cup, so her hormonal cycles can be monitored. That is a key procedure when it comes to trying to breed Morgan, and Morgan offers SeaWorld (which listed Morgan as a SeaWorld asset when it filed the papers for its recent IPO) extremely valuable wild DNA for its captive breeding program.

Finally, Volhardt takes the opportunity to mention the stranded orca that was shot in the head in Norway in April, contrasting its fate to that of Morgan. On the one hand, it is a fair point since Morgan was “rescued” rather than “euthanized.” On the other hand, topping a standard in which stranded orcas are shot in the head is setting the bar pretty low. And I am pretty sure that none of the release plans proposed for Morgan include a rifle.

All in all, a pretty sophisticated PR effort, aimed at making the public feel okay about Morgan being at Loro Parque.

Waterwork, Calves, And Cadillac Killer Whales

A few weeks ago I dug into the details of a minor incident in which Taku gave former SeaWorld Florida trainer Jeff Ventre an unscheduled bump.

There were two aspects I have been meaning to follow up on, which further illustrate the complexities and subtleties of killer whale entertainment.

As I noted in the previous post, Taku’s little stunt was written off as “baby behavior.” Calves are naturally immature, inexperienced, and can be unpredictable. According to Carol Ray, another former SeaWorld Florida trainer from that era, Katerina and Taima were also well known for that sort of acting up as calves. Former SeaWorld Florida trainer Samantha Berg adds: “Taima had her way with Teri Corbett’s ponytail on more than one occasion, until management decided that women working Taima in the water had to wear their hair in a bun. But I don’t know how long that rule lasted.”

So when calves went off script it was tolerated–up to a point.

But the fact that calves are unpredictable and sometimes do not do what they are supposed to do created an interesting dilemma for SeaWorld regarding waterwork. On the one hand, a number of SeaWorld killer whale mothers have been sensitive to whether their caves were with them in the pool. The most notorious is Kasatka at SeaWorld California, whose profile notes that aggression was sometimes linked to “when she was separated from her calf and her calf was in distress.” Kasatka’s profile includes a pretty long rap sheet of incidents, a number of which were attributed to a calf being in another pool and/or vocalizing.

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Of course, the most dramatic incident was when she repeatedly dragged Ken Peters to the bottom of the pool in 2006, a scene which features in Blackfish.

So, for whales like Kasatka who liked to have their calves around, it could be an important safety measure to have a calf in the show pool if the Continue reading “Waterwork, Calves, And Cadillac Killer Whales”

OSHA vs. SeaWorld: Hearing Update

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Local 6 was in the courtroom, and Local 6 has a report on how the day went:

In court Thursday, SeaWorld lawyers said the company consulted with marine mammal experts from the Georgia Aquarium and Atlantis Resorts in the Bahamas to establish its own minimum distances trainers can interact with killer whales. Neither facility houses killer whales.

According to SeaWorld Animal Training Curator Kelly Flaherty Clark, trainers are now required to stay three feet away from killer whales if they are kneeling on a flat surface. Trainers must be 18 inches from the edge of the pool if they standing near the whales, she said.

Clark testified that trainers may still touch a killer whale or rub its back while standing next to the animal on a submerged ledge in the pool, as long as the trainer is positioned along the side of the animal’s body between its blowhole and tail. The trainer must stay away from the whale’s mouth and tail and have an escape route if the whale were to move, said Clark.

Under cross examination by OSHA lawyers, Clark acknowleged a killer whale can potentially spin 360 degrees on the submerged ledge as a trainer stands next to it. OSHA lawyers point out that it is up to the employees themselves to determine whether the whale might attempt to hurt them.

“Everything we did was about making sure my employees were safe,” testified Clark, who said no SeaWorld trainers have been injured since Dawn Brancheau was drowned by a killer whale in 2010. “We haven’t even had a scraped knee.”

Judge Welsch must know more about SeaWorld and killer whales than he ever dreamed possible. Following the hearing he will rule on whether SeaWorld had a good excuse for missing last July’s deadline to be in compliance with his ruling that trainers must maintain a minimum separation or work from behind a barrier.

I don’t think he will care as much about whether SeaWorld has suffered any scraped knees, as he will about the question of whether SeaWorld had any legal justification to ignore his ruling and avoid compliance. Some judges might take that hard.

SeaWorld Vs OSHA (Round 412)

They are in court again right now, debating trainer-killer whale protocols, and an Orlando reporter is live-tweeting the proceedings.

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Trainer Corner: John Hargrove On “Drywork” Risk

As SeaWorld and OSHA continue their backroom and courtroom dealings over what sort of interactions SeaWorld trainers should be allowed to have with SeaWorld’s killer whales, the question of the risks inherent in drywork is central.

“Drywork” is when trainers interact with the killer whales on slideouts, stages, and shallow ledges. That is in contrast to waterwork, which is interactions in which trainers are in the pools with the killer whales. SeaWorld stopped performing waterwork after Dawn Brancheau was killed by Tilikum (even though Brancheau was in fact doing drywork according to SeaWorld’s definition). Given the OSHA citations and court rulings so far, it doesn’t seem likely that SeaWorld will feature waterwork again anytime soon.

However, SeaWorld, it appears, would like to work out a deal that would modify OSHA’s stipulation that trainers maintain a minimum distance or work from behind a barrier, and allow SeaWorld trainers during shows to have close contact with killer whales when the trainer (and often the killer whale, too) is out of the water on the stage or a slideout.

I think that we can stipulate that a trainer in the water with a killer whale is much more vulnerable than a trainer out of the water. But even if that is so, OSHA’s main concern has to be what sort of risks to trainers exist during drywork. OSHA’s expert witness when it faced off against SeaWorld in court in 2011, Dr. David Duffus (who also features in Blackfish) has long been of the view that a killer whale’s speed, power and intelligence means that the risks to trainers are inversely correlated to the distance that exists between a trainer and a killer whale. No distance = higher risk. Greater distance = lower risk.

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As OSHA ponders how much risk there is in trainers getting close to killer whales, I thought I would ask an expert, John Hargrove, a former SeaWorld senior trainer with long experience at both the SeaWorld California and SeaWorld Texas parks.

Hargrove told me that the risk for trainers who are out of the water “is low.” But he also made clear that risks remain, and “that we have documented past incidents which prove trainers can be struck.”

He cited as an example an incident at SeaWorld California in which Orkid broke off a requested behavior underwater and instead came up on the stage and struck a trainer, sending her tumbling, and putting her in the hospital. “Orkid intentionally slid out and struck her,” Hargrove says, noting that any time a whale is sliding across the stage–which is a popular behavior–it has the opportunity to strike trainers. “The only safe place to be during a stage slide is far stage right or left, in a place where there is no set blocking the trainer from jumping back. Anywhere else the whale can crush you if they want to.”

Another time, during a sonogram, Orkid came up out of the water and struck that same trainer as she stood poolside, knocking her over a wall. Continue reading “Trainer Corner: John Hargrove On “Drywork” Risk”