Blackfish Page #6

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who's going to take care of Tilikum?"

That's why I stayed.

Because I felt sorry for Tilikum.

I mean, if you want to get down

to the nuts and bolts of it,

I stayed because I felt sorry for Tilikum.

And I couldn't bring myself to stop coming

and trying to take care of him.

Gosh, do I love coming out here every day

and having the audience just love

what we're doing with the animals.

How do I make this animal

as beautiful as they are

and have people walk away loving this animal?

And they're touched and they're moved

and I feel like I made a difference to them.

I left in January of 2010,

a month before Dawn passed away.

She was like a safety guru.

I mean, she was always

double-checking,

making sure that everyone

was doing the right thing.

So I remember she would record

every show that she did

and she would watch it and critique herself.

She was constantly trying to be better.

When I found out it was Dawn,

I was shocked.

That could have been me.

I could have been the spotter.

What if I was there and I could have saved her?

You know, all these things go through your mind.

John Sillick is the guy who, in 1987,

was crushed between two whales

at SeaWorld of San Diego.

Now, even though I'd been working

at SeaWorld for six months,

I had no idea that that had even happened.

I never even heard that story.

And the SeaWorld party line was that,

well, that was-- it was a trainer error.

It was John's fault.

You know, John's fault.

He was supposed to get off that whale.

And for years, I believed that

and I told people that.

I actually started at SeaWorld, like,

five days after that event occurred

and we didn't--

we weren't told much about it

other than it was trainer error.

And, you know, especially

when you're new into the program,

you don't really question a whole lot.

Well, you know, years later,

when you actually look at the footage,

you go, "You know what?

He didn't do anything wrong."

That whale just landed on him, you know.

That whale just went to the wrong spot.

It could have been aggression.

Who knows?

But it was not the trainer's fault

at all, watching that video.

When I saw the video

of the killer whale landing on John,

I mean, it just absolutely took my breath away.

L9aSped.

I watched it two or three times,

and every time I saw that, I just gasped.

I could not believe what I was seeing.

What kept his body together is--

his wetsuit basically held him together.

But I know he's had multiple surgeries

and he's got tons of hardware in his body.

And it's hard for me to believe

that I didn't actually see that video

while I was actually an animal trainer

because it seems to me that every person

who works with killer whales

should have to watch that video.

Tamarie--

you know, Tamarie made mistakes.

The most important one

was interacting with whales

without a spotter.

So she's putting her foot on Orkid,

she's taking her foot off.

She's putting her foot on Orkid,

her rostrum, she's taking it off.

Watching the video, knowing Orkid,

your stomach drops because you know

what's probably going to happen.

She grabbed her foot.

Tamarie whips around and she grabs the gate.

You see herjust ripped from the gate.

At this point, Tamarie knows

that she's in trouble.

She's under the water.

Splash and Orkid both have her.

She's totally out of view.

No other trainer knows that this is happening.

People start to scream.

It was a park guest that was filming it.

You hear-- you don't see her,

but you hear Tamarie surface.

You hear herjust scream out,

"Somebody help me."

And the way she screamed it,

it was just

such a bloodcurdling--

like she knew she was going to die.

Robin-- when he ran over,

he made a brilliant decision.

He told a trainer to run and take

the chain off Kasatka's gate.

By taking that chain off,

it would give the precursor to Orkid

that Kasatka was coming in.

Kasatka's more dominant than Orkid,

so Orkid let her go.

Her arm, it was U-shaped.

It was compound fractured.

She's very lucky to be alive, that's for sure.

I believe it's 70 plus, maybe even more,

just killer whale trainer accidents.

Maybe 30 of them happened prior to me

being actually hired at SeaWorld.

And I knew about none of them.

I've seen animals come out at trainers.

Something's wrong.

I've seen people get slammed.

The whales, they're just playing or--

or they're upset for a second.

It was just something that happened, you know?

This culture of "You get back on the horse

and you dive back in the water.

And if you're hurt, well, then we've got

other people that will replace you."

And, "You came a long way.

Are you sure you want that?"

A SeaWorld trainer is recovering today

after a terrifying ordeal

in front of a horrified audience.

For some reason,

the whale just took a different approach

to what it was going to do

with a very senior,

very experienced trainer, Ken Peters,

and dragged him to the bottom of the pool

and held him at the bottom.

Let him go, picked him up,

took him down again.

And these periods he was taken down

were pretty close to the mark.

You know, a minute, a minute 20.

When he was at the surface, he didn't panic,

he didn't thrash, he didn't scream.

Maybe he's just built that way.

But he stroked the whale.

And the whale let go of one foot

and grabbed the other.

That's a pretty deep pool

and he took him right down.

I think that's to two atmospheres of pressure.

Apparently, Mr. Peters

is an experienced scuba diver

and I think that knowledge probably contributed

to how he was able to be hauled down there

that quickly and stay calm and know what to do.

He knew what he was doing because

you can see him actually in the film.

It's-- the def is so good,

you can see him ventilating.

You can see him ventilating really hard.

So he knows about swimming

and diving and being underwater.

He may have been assuming

he was going under again.

I did not walk away unimpressed

by his calm demeanor

during that whole affair.

I would be scared shitless.

He was near to the end.

Presumably, Ken Peters

had a relationship with this whale.

Maybe he did.

Maybe that's what saved him.

But Peters got the whale to let him go.

And they strung a net across.

And Ken Peters pulled himself

over the float line

and swam like a demon

to a slide-out

because the whale was coming right behind him.

The whale jumped over and came right after him.

He tried to stand up and run.

Of course, his feet were damaged.

I mean, he just fell and he scrambled.

And they take this as a prime example

of their training working.

And they say, "Just stand back

and stay calm," and that did work.

They claim this as a victory

of how they do business.

And maybe so, but it can also be interpreted

as a hair's breadth away from another fatality.

Hi, Shamu.

Hi, everybody.

We're the Johnsons from Detroit, Michigan.

We sure had a great time

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