Over the weekend I learned a little bit more about the incident that led to Nakai’s injury, and Ingrid Visser of the Orca Research Trust visited SeaWorld in San Diego and took some more pictures of Nakai’s injury. Here is the most detailed photo she took (more photos after the jump):
Regarding the question of whether the injury might come from a bite from another orca, Visser writes: “Of note is that in [this photo], at the bottom right of the wound, near the trainers shoe in the photo, there are four puncture marks – and the spacing matches that for orca teeth – as you can see from Nakai’s teeth in this same photo.”
And here is some additional detail on what happened that night when Nakai was injured. As a number of people have noted, the injury occurred after Sea World San Diego closed to the general public for the evening. Sometimes SeaWorld puts on special shows for corporate groups, and the evening show on the 29th (oope, typo) 20th was such a show.
During the show Nakai, Keet and Ike were all at stage when all three killer whales suddenly took off without warning and and started fighting with one another. SeaWorld’s review of the tapes could not identify an instigator or an aggressor. As I wrote last week, Nakai split into the back pool. Ike and Keet, however, returned to the stage and control, so the trainers continued the show. When trainers finally called Nakai over later that evening for the final feeding and saw that he was injured they were shocked be the severity of the wound. In fact, it is about as bad a wound as most trainers have ever seen. In response, SeaWorld San Diego will henceforth adopt the practice of immediately checking any killer whales involved in similar, high-intensity, melees to try and make sure that injuries are identified right away.
Apart from the death of Kandu V at SeaWorld San Diego in 1989, the only injury many trainers can remember that was even close in severity to Nakai’s was a 1990s injury to Splash, who lost part of his jaw when he was thrown by Takara against a gate while they were messing around. The gate had a chain and Continue reading “Nakai Photos and Backstory”
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