Blackfish Page #4

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Oh!

Oh, I can't stand it.

If you can't watch

the bullfight, you'd better leave.

Oh, yeah, here they go.

Look at this-- three of them.

Look at this. Look at this.

Oh, God. Oh, no!

- Oh, God!

- It's all over.

Nope, not quite.

Yeah, it's all over.

It's all over.

The First Nations people

and the old fishermen on the coast,

they call them "blackfish."

They're an animal that possesses

great spiritual power

and they're not to be meddled with.

I've spent a lot of time around killer whales

and they're always in charge.

I never get out of the boat,

I never mess with them.

The speed and the power is quite amazing.

Rules are the same

as the pool hall--

keep one foot on the floor at all times.

Even after seeing them thousands of times...

you see them and you still--

you know, wake up.

He arrived, I think, in 1992.

I was at Whale and Dolphin Stadium

when he arrived.

And he's twice as large

as the next animal in the facility.

Yay!

The guy is right at about 12,000 pounds.

That's incredible.

He looks fantastic.

When Tilikum arrived at SeaWorld,

he was attacked viciously,

repeatedly by Katina and others.

In the wild, it's a very matriarchal society.

Male whales are kept at the perimeter.

In captivity,

the animals are squeezed

into very close proximity.

Tilikum-- the poor guy

is so large,

he couldn't get away

because he just is not as mobile

relative to the smaller and more agile females.

And where was he going to run?

There's no place to run.

I think he spent a lot of time in isolation.

SeaWorld claims that, "Oh, no,

he's always in with the other--

with the females," but from what I saw,

he was mostly put with the females

for breeding purposes

and he didn't spend a lot of time,

you know, with the other whales.

It's for his own protection

that he gets beat up.

And so by segregating him,

it provides a physical barrier

so the females can't kick his butt.

Tilikum is pretty much kept in the back,

and then brought out at the very end

as, like, the big splash.

He was always happy to see you in the morning.

- Hi!

- There we go.

- You're the boy.

- Look at his chompers.

Maybe because he was alone,

maybe because he was hungry,

maybe because he just liked you--

who knows what was going on in his head.

You want to whistle?

-- All right, so he can talk to us.

- Yes.

- You don't say.

He's precious.

Yes?

That was really loud.

Terrific.

- Come on, big boy.

- Show the pecs.

He seemed to like to work.

He seemed to be interested.

He seemed to want to learn new things.

He seemed to be enjoying

working with the trainers.

He, for me, was a joy.

He really responded to me and I--

you know, every day I went to work,

I was happy to see Tilly.

- Boop!

- That's cute.

You're being too cute.

I never got the impression

of him while I was there

that, oh, my God, he's the scary whale.

Not at all.

Maybe some of it's just our naivet or whatever,

you know, because we weren't given

the full details of Keltie's situation.

Turn around.

Smile, buddy.

- Cheese.

- Yay!

I was under the impression

that Tilikum had nothing to do

with her death specifically,

that it was the female whales

who were responsible for her death.

What I found really odd at first

was the way they were acting

around this whale and what they had told us

seemed to me to be two different things.

The first day he arrived, I remember

one of the senior trainers

at SeaWorld, she--

Tilikum was in a pool

and she was walking over a gate,

and she had her wetsuit unzipped

and it was tied around her waist.

And she was making cooing noises and going,

"Hey, Tilikum,

what a cute little whale."

And she was, like,

just kind of play-talking at him,

and one of the supervisors said,

"Get her out of there!"

And just screamed at her,

like, "Get her away from there,"

like they were so worried

that something was going to happen.

And I remember thinking,

"Why are you guys making

such a big deal out of this

when he didn't actually kill her?"

Well, clearly management thought

there was some reason

to exercise caution around him.

You know, clearly they knew more

than they were telling us.

Ladies and gentlemen, the next two

behaviors you're going to be seeing,

you can only see right here at SeaWorld.

Jeff was out in the audience

filming one of the Shamu shows.

It was a perfect show.

All of the hot dog sequences,

the water works sequences went off great.

I was really excited just to be capturing this

because it was kind of turning out

to be a great show.

A show that's kind of complete--

it doesn't-- it probably only happens

a few times a week.

At the very end of the show,

Liz was working Tilikum

and apparently Tilikum

lunged out of the water at her.

And I had captured Tilikum

coming out of the water

kind of turning sideways and appeared to me

to try to grab Liz.

And at that moment,

the tape became unusable.

I was just kind of basically instructed

to get rid of the tape.

Wanting to kind of preserve the tape,

I actually used the editing equipment

and snipped out

that little half-second or second

when he did that and stitched it back together

so it just kind of looked like

a glitch in the tape.

And I'm like, "Look at this."

And it was like, "No.

This is no longer usable."

You know, and so we had to destroy the tape.

It's pretty outrageous that SeaWorld would claim

there was no expecting Tilikum

to come out of the water

because they had witnessed him

coming out of the water,

and it's written into his profile.

He lunges at trainers.

When we visit SeaWorld,

we tend to take advantage of the fact

that Shamu has been provided

with a safe and comfortable habitat.

And everything trained is an extension

of the killer whale's natural behavior.

I spewed out the party line during shows.

I'm totally mortified now.

There was like-- something like,

"Look at Namu.

Namu's not doing that

because she has to."

Namu is doing this because she really wants to.

Oh, my gosh.

Like, some of the things I'm embarrassed by,

so embarrassed by.

At the time, I think

I could have convinced myself

that the relationships that we had

were built on something

stronger than the fact

that I'm giving them fish.

You know, I like to think that...

but I don't know that that's the truth.

I had been there a while and I had seen

a few other things along the way

that made me question why I was there

and what we were doing with these animals.

On November 4, 1988,

a killer whale at SeaWorld

gave the performance of a lifetime.

Don't miss this small miracle.

Come see our new Baby Shamu.

I know it was naive of me,

but I thought that...

it was our responsibility

to do as much as we could

to keep their family units together

since we knew that in the wild

that's what happens.

Yes, sir, that's our baby...

Kalina was the first Baby Shamu.

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