Blackfish Page #5

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Baby Shamu--

SeaWorld's newest star...

She had become quite disruptive

and challenging her mom a little bit

and disrupting some shows

and that kind of thing.

She's got the whole place jumpin'

Shamu,

she's that baby whale.

It was decided by the higher-ups

that she would be moved

to another park when she was

just four, four and a half years old.

And that was news to us as trainers

that were working with her.

To me, it had never crossed my mind

that they might be moving the baby from her mom.

The supervisors basically

was kind of mocking me,

like, "Oh, you're saying, 'Poor Kalina,"'

you know, "'what's she going to do

without her mommy?"'

And, you know-- and that

of course just shut me up.

So, the night of the move,

we had to deploy the nets

to separate them and get Kalina,

the baby, into the med pool.

And Katina was generally a quiet whale.

She was not an overly vocal whale.

After, Kalina was removed from the scene

and put on the truck and taken to the airport,

and Katina, her mom, was left in the pool.

She stayed in the corner of the pool,

like, literally just shaking and screaming,

screeching, crying.

Like, I had never seen her

do anything like that.

And the other females in the pool,

maybe once or twice during the night

they'd come out and check on her.

And she'd screech and cry

and they would just run back.

There was nothing that you could call that,

watching it, besides grief.

Those are not your whales.

You know, you love them and you'll think,

"I'm the one that touches them,

feeds them, keeps them alive,

gives them the care

that they need."

They're not your whales.

They own them.

Kasatka and Takara were very close.

Kasatka was the mother, Takara's the calf.

Takara was special to me.

They were inseparable.

When they separated Kasatka and Takara,

it was to take Takara to Florida.

Once Takara had already been

stretchered out of the pool,

put on the truck, driven to the airport...

Kasatka continued to make vocals

that had never been heard before.

They brought in

the senior research scientists

to analyze the vocals.

They were long-range vocals.

She was trying something

that no one had even heard before

looking for Takara.

That's heartbreaking.

How can anyone

look at that and think

that that is morally acceptable?

It's not.

It is not okay.

Stand by, Dean.

Let's go live to SeaWorld

where Dean Gomersall

is joining us for a sneak peek.

Hi, Dean.

Tell us about the new show.

Good afternoon, Richard.

The new show is the Whale and Dolphin Discovery.

What it does is it shows

the relationship we have

between all our animals here at the Whale...

There's so many things that were told to us

that they tell us-- they tell you

so many times

that you just--

you start believing it.

So all the animals here get along very well.

It's just like training your dog, really.

I was blind, you know.

I was a kid.

I didn't know what I was doing, really.

- Nice.

- Good job.

You did a real good job.

Ladies and gentlemen,

this is David from Maryland.

Go ahead and wave at everyone, David.

I just really bought into what they told us.

You know, I learned to say

what they told us to the audience.

Hello out there.

Children are some of Shamu's biggest fans.

We can do just about anything we want.

I thought I knew everything about

killer whales when I worked there,

you know, and everything about these animals.

I really know nothing about killer whales.

I know a lot about being an animal trainer

or a killer whale trainer,

but I don't know anything

about these animals' natural history

or their behavior.

I really in some ways believed a lot

of what I was learning from them,

because why would they lie?

Because the whales in their pools die young,

they like to say that all orcas

die at 25 or 30 years.

- 25 to 35 years.

- 25 to 35 years.

They're documented in the wild

living to be about...

35, mid-30s.

They tend to live a lot longer

in this environment

because they have all the veterinary care.

And of course that's false.

We knew by 1980, after half a dozen

years of the research,

that they live equivalent to human life spans.

And every other potentially

embarrassing fact is twisted

and turned and denied one way or another.

So, in the wild, they live...

- Less.

- Less.

Like the floppy dorsal fins.

25% of whales have a fin

that turns over like that

as they get older.

Dorsal collapse happens

in less than 1% of wild killer whales.

We know this.

All the captive males

100% have collapsed dorsal fins.

And they say that they're a family,

that the whales are in their family.

They have their pods.

But that's just an artificial

assemblage of their collection,

however management decides they should mix them

and whichever ones happen to be born

or bought and brought in.

That's not a family, you know.

Come on.

You've got animals

from different cultural subsets

that have been brought in from various parks.

These are different nations.

These aren't just two different killer whales.

These animals, they've got different genes,

they use different languages.

Well, what could happen

as a result of them being

thrown in with other whales

that they haven't grown up with,

that are not part of their culture

is there's hyperaggression...

...a lot of violence,

a lot of killing in captivity

that you don't ever see in the wild.

For the health and safety of the animals,

please do not put your hands in the water.

It was always sort of this backdrop,

this underpinning of tension between animals.

Whale-on-whale aggression was

just part of your-- the daily existence.

We ask that you use

the stairs and aisleways as you exit.

Please do not step on the seats.

These areas may become wet

and therefore slippery to some footwear.

Thank you.

Blue wonder...

In the wild, when there's tension,

they've got thousands of square miles

to exit the scene and they can get away.

You don't have that in captivity.

Could you imagine being in a small

concrete enclosure for your life

when you're used to swimming 100 miles a day?

Free-feeling...

Sometimes this aggression became very severe

and, in fact, whales have died

in captivity because of this aggression.

I think it was 1988.

Kandu, trying to assert

her dominance over Corky,

rammed Corky.

It fractured her jaw,

which cut an artery in her head

and then she bled out.

Now that's got to be a hard way to go down.

I saw that there was just

a lot of things that weren't right.

And there was a lot of it--

misinformation--

and something was amiss.

And, you know, I sort of

compartmentalized that part of it

and did the best that I could

with the knowledge that I had

to take care of the animals that were there.

You know, I think all the trainers there

have the same thing in their heart.

They're trying to make a difference

in the lives of the animals.

You think that, "if I leave,

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