how do you prepare yourself for an encounter with an 8,000-pound orca? i always thought you needed a master s degree in marine biology to be a trainer. it takes years of study and experience to meet the strict requirements necessary to interact in the water with shamu. come to find out, it really is more about your personality and how good you can swim. i went and tried out, got the job right away. i was, like, yeah. i was so excited. so, so excited. i really wanted to be there. i really wanted to do the job. i couldn t wait to get in the water with the animals. i really was proud of being a seaworld trainer. i thought this was the most amazing job. i showed up there on my first day not really knowing what to expect. i was told to put on a wetsuit and get in the water. hi, mom. i was scared out of my wits. first of all, i put my wetsuit on backwards because i was raised on a farm in virginia. my first thought and memory of
this guy has a proven track record of killing people. he s clearly a liability to the institution. why keep him around? well, it s quite simple to answer, and that is that his semen is worth a lot of money. over the years tilikum has been one of the main breeding whales at seaworld. which is brilliant because they can inseminate way more female whales because they can get his sperm and freeze it and he s basically operating as a sperm bank. in a reputable breeding program, rule number one is you certainly would not breed an animal that has shown a history of aggression towards humans. imagine if you had a pit bull who had killed. that animal would have likely been put down. but in the entire seaworld collection, it s like 54% of the whales in seaworld s collection now have tilikum s genes.
smile, buddy. i was under the impression that tilikum had nothing to do with her death. specifically, that it was the female whales responsible for her death. what i found really odd at first was the way they were acting around this whale and what they told us seemed to me to be two different things. the first day he arrived, i remember one of the senior trainers at seaworld, tilikum was in a pool and she was walking over a gate and she had her wet suit unzipped tied around her waist and making cooing noises and going hey, tilikum. what a cute little whale. and she was just kind of play talking at him. and one of the supervisors said, get her out of there! just screamed at her. like, get her away from there, 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 k
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kastka is more dominant than orchid, so orchid 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 actually being hired at seaworld. and i knew about none of them. i ve seen animals come out at trainers. something is wrong. i ve seen people get slammed.