I wasn't going to comment on this thread, but there's so much weirdness of attitude concerning orcas that I feel the need to do so. I'm no orca expert. I spent a dash over three months in the early 1970s as the most junior of the orca training team at an oceanarium. This was in the very early days, we had little to go on and played by ear a lot. We played with the whales, they played with us, people watched and enjoyed the show.
Orcas are real smart, really, really smart. Maybe as smart as we are, maybe not, maybe smarter, but their intelligence is in a whole different direction. There were times when I seriously wondered who was watching and studying whom. I sometimes got the feeling that our whale was kind of a reluctant astronaut, maybe more like an alien abduction that had made the best of it and joined the game.
Our whale was real picky about whom she would let in the tank, there were people she liked and people she hated. On of the guys that she hated she picked up on her forehead and heaved out of the tank over the glass barricade, breaking one of his arms and one of his legs. She never treated me that way, but she had a reputation as a fractious whale.
Anyway, we were putting on these shows that demonstrated what we had learned about working with the whales, pretty simple stuff by today's standards (on of my real regrets is that we never thought of the trainer-on-the-nose-jump that some are doing today, that looks rather exciting). The facility that we worked at was sold to an entertainment company, and that company wanted ENTERTAINMENT! We were given scripts and cute little props and were expected to get the whales to cooperate and be disciplined into a set, repeatable routine ... complete with pauses for laugh lines and little sailor hats.
Well ... we (the staff) didn't like it and it was our perception (almost to a man) that the whales didn't like being regimented either ... they wanted to play, not work. After a week or so (if I recall correctly) all but one or two trainers quit because we felt that the changes being pushed on us demanded way too much of the whales and created a restiveness that none of us really wanted to put ourselves in the path of.
I'd say that we were proven both right and wrong ... but that often what happens when you're in a pioneering situation. We were wrong, you can mold the whales into a set and repeatable script, but there is danger in doing so. Your safety is completely dependent upon your relationship with the whale and the whale's immediate state of mind, which is (at least in my very short experience) mercurial.
When I'd have a show coming up, I'd go out to the pool 15 minuets or so early. I'd get the whale to come to me, I'd feed her and talk to her and try a few behaviors to see what she was into just then, and what she did not want to do. Then I'd put together a show based on what she wanted to do and I'd not demand that she do anything that she not enthusiastic about. So no two shows were ever the same, and that was what the ENTERTAINMENT company wanted changed, people love to come back again and again and see the same thing.
I feel really bad when a trainer gets hurt and even worse when one dies. I feel the same way when a whale gets hurt or dies too.
Look at both sides and be objective in your statement...!
