Just for Show

People have forever marveled at the wonderful wonders of the ocean and the amazing creatures that call the oceans home. People have made spectacles of wild animals to give a accessible glimpse of how these wild animals can be trained into well mannered specimens. Through this process there are trainers that risk their lives everyday and put all of their trust into these massive aquatic creatures. For example, Dawn Brancheau is one of those people who gave her whole life to studying and working with orcas. These beautiful creatures that the loved, so much were in fact the cause of her death. On February 24th, 2010 an orca, Tillikum, took his trainer down to the depths of his tank and started thrashing her around, according to eye witnesses. After 16 years of training, 40 year old Dawn never saw this coming as she had been facing the audience and was pulled into the tank by the orca. Some eye witnesses state that the orca went for her pony tail as if it may have been a toy to him. Others state that the orca took her down by her waist or leg. No matter the method Tillikum used he has now claimed lives of two orca trainers.

Tillikum has caused the death of two trainers in the past one of which was found with his past trainer at the bottom the tank. It has been reported the trainer found in the tank had gone for a unsupervised swim with the whale after the shows had been conducted leaving no eye witnesses. With this attack in the past it was agreed with Sea World and the past owner that he would be kept only for breeding purposes, which they were successful at, but they went above the contract and had him performing as one of the main acts seeing that 12,000 lbs. he is the largest orca in captivity.

There have been many discussions on whether this animal will be kept. Sea World has decided that they will keep the whale for breeding purposes along with the task of being purely for show. There will no longer be meet and greets with the whale and it will have no further training or performaces. They do not feel another person should be put in the way of the strength of these magnificent animals.

Sea World did not consider putting Tillikum back in the ocean for the reason being a past orca, Keiko, did not adapt to ocean life once reintroduced and ended up dying in the Norwegian coastal waters. He had cost his owner millions in dollars in efforts to teach him to adapt, but Keiko ended up dying of pneumonia.

I feel that through the media making a spectacle of this situation people will once again realize these animals are not meant to be kept in tanks and shown of to the public. Even though I have gone to see dolphin shows it still seems cruel to hinder an animal of its freedoms. There is no way to change the animals that are in captivity now as they have adapted to the lifestyle of captivity. I do feel that through this animal rights activists may make a case that these animals are to unpredictable and angry causing them to react this way towards their owners and trainers leaving them to just die in a tank. Through this new case there needs to be new regulations for both trainers and orcas, so that an incident like this because more avoidable. My prayers go out Dawn's family who is morning the loss of their daughter.