Blackfish Page #8

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that she asks him to do

where Tilikum justjumps right in

and he does exactly what she asks him to do.

There seemed to be a point in the session

where things went south, so to speak.

And in my humble opinion,

it was at that missed bridge--

whistle bridge,

on the perimeter pec wave.

She asked him to do a perimeter pec wave

where she asked him to basically

go all the way around the pool

and wave his pectoral flipper.

And she blows her whistle...

- There we go.

- ...which is a bridge,

which tells the animal that, okay,

you've done a good job.

Come back and get food.

But he missed that cue.

He likes waving so much.

That's beyond waving.

And he went all the way around the pool

on this perimeter pec wave.

That's all right.

We're going to let him keep on waving.

My interpretation is that

he didn't hear the whistle.

So not only did he not hear the bridge,

then he went and did

a perfect behavior and came back,

and what he got was what we call

a three-second neutral response,

which is just a way to let the animal know,

"No, you didn't do the correct thing.

You're not going to get rewarded.

And then we're going to move on."

And then you can also see through the video

that Dawn is running out of food.

The animals can sense

when you're getting to the bottom

of your bucket of fish,

because they can hear the ice clanging around

and the kind of fishy, soupy water

at the bottom.

And the handfuls of fish that

they're getting delivered by the trainer

are all getting smaller.

So they know that they're coming down

to the end of session.

When you see the difference

between the beginning of the video

and the end of the video, you can see

that he's just not quite on his game anymore.

There was no food left.

She kept asking him for more and more behaviors.

He wasn't getting reinforced for the behaviors

that he was doing correctly.

He probably was frustrated towards the end.

Then she walked around the perimeter of G pool.

He followed her.

And then continued over

into the rocky ledge area

where she laid down with him

to do a relationship session,

which is--

it's quiet time, basically.

Tilikum at some point

grabbed ahold of her left forearm

and started to drag her

and eventually did a barrel roll

and pulled her in.

It may have started as play or frustration

and clearly escalated to be

very violent behavior

that I think was anything but play.

In the end, he basically

just completely mutilated that poor girl.

They were gathering

all of the trainers at the Texas park.

He said, "There's been an accident

at the Florida park

and a trainer was killed."

Hearing that it was Dawn,

I was-- I couldn't believe it.

I just remember saying to myself, "Not Dawn.

It can't be Dawn."

He said that--

"And he still has her."

And I just...

was so disturbed by that

and the reality of how powerless we are.

Avulsion, laceration, abrasion, fractures.

Fractures and associated hemorrhages.

Blunt force traumas

to the main body, to the extremities.

To see this meted out against a trainer...

and I cannot fathom the reason.

It's shocking.

The lawyer for OSHA asked me

what I thought we'd learned,

and I'm sitting in the courtroom

and I've got the Keltie Byrne

case file in one hand

and I've got Dawn Brancheau in the other.

And they're almost, to the day, 20 years apart.

And I'm looking at these two things.

My only answer is, "Nothing."

In fact, it's not a damn thing.

We have not learned a damn thing

for something like that

to happen 20 years apart.

Could you tell

if it was an accident or if this--

Did this female trainer

work with this whale on a regular basis?

I don't know. What apparently happened

is we had a female trainer

back in the whale holding area.

She apparently slipped or fell into the tank

and was fatally injured by one of the whales.

At first, SeaWorld reported

that a trainer slipped

and fell in the water and was drowned.

So that was the first report.

It wasn't until eyewitness

accounts disputed that

that they had to go back in their huddle

and say, "Wait a minute.

We gotta come up with a new plan."

New tonight--

SeaWorld has confirmed

the killer whale pulled

the woman into the water.

She didn't fall into the tank

as the sheriff's department initially reported.

The new plan is that he grabbed her ponytail.

This is a subtle way of placing

the blame on Dawn's shoulders.

She shouldn't have had a long ponytail,

or if she did have that ponytail,

it should have been up in a bun.

Dawn, if she was standing here

with me right now,

would tell you that it was her mistake

in allowing that to happen.

They blamed her.

How dare you?

How disrespectful for you to blame her

when she's not even alive to defend herself.

He grabbed her ponytail

and pulled her into the water.

That's as simple as it gets.

There are photographs

of plenty of other trainers

doing exactly the same thing that she was doing,

so I knew that SeaWorld was lying

about the fact that this was her fault.

The ponytail, in all likelihood, is just a tale.

The safety spotter, who apparently

didn't actually see the takedown,

came up with that.

- Are you excited?

- Yeah!

During the spotter's testimony,

OSHA pushed him to say

that he wasn't really sure

that it was her ponytail

that was in the whale's mouth,

that he just saw her underwater

and he assumed it was the ponytail.

OSHA contends that the whale came up

and grabbed Dawn Brancheau's arm,

saying that that was another level

of aggressiveness.

And again, SeaWorld is saying

it was not an aggressive move.

One of SeaWorld's top curators, Chuck Tompkins,

said when Dawn Brancheau

was pulled off that ledge,

it wasn't necessarily

aggressive behavior by the whale.

The initial grab was not an act of aggression.

This is not a crazed animal.

The industry has a vested interest

in spinning these

so that the animals continue to appear

like cuddly teddy bears

that are completely safe.

You know, that sells a lot of Shamu dolls,

it sells a lot of tickets at the gate,

and that's the story line

that they're going to continue

to stick with for as long as they can.

Recognize that those that say

this is a crazed animal

that acted out and grabbed Dawn maliciously,

they want to prove the theorem

that captivity makes animals crazy.

And that is just false.

All whales in captivity have a bad life.

They're all emotionally destroyed.

They're all psychologically traumatized,

so they are ticking time bombs.

It's not just Tilikum.

We have to separate

what happened to Dawn--

and, as tragic as it is, no one wants

to ever see it happen again.

Can SeaWorld create an environment

where it never happens again?

Yes, I absolutely believe they can.

What if there were no SeaWorlds?

I can't imagine a society, with the value we put

on marine mammals, if those parks didn't exist.

I'm not at all interested in having my daughter,

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