strike zone and twilight zone, congratulations, although i'm not that bad. so good to see you smile, incredibly, completely ridiculously good. orange county fire rescue? >> 6600 sea harbor drive. seaworld stadium. >> okay. >> we actually have a trainer in the water with one of our whales, the whale they aren't supposed to be in the water with. >> okay. we'll get somebody en route.

>> gate number three seaworld stadium. >> gate three. >> orange county sheriff's office. >> we need a respond to a dead person at seaworld. a whale has eaten one of the trainers. >> a whale ate one of the trainers? >> that's correct. ♪ do you believe? >> my parents first brought me to a seaworld park when i was very young.

from that point forward, i was hooked. it meant everything to me because, you know, i never wanted anything more. >> i remember, you know, being probably in first or second grade watching national geographic specials or specials and seeing whales and dolphins and as a little kid, just being really incredibly inspired to it. i never went to seaworld. i grew up in new york so i went to the bronx zoo. >> grew up on a lake with horses. we'd swim the horses. >> i grew up around the ocean. >> i came from the middle of the country in flat land kansas. >> from virginia traveled down, did the theme park thing in orlando when i was 17. and saw the night show at shamu stadium. very emotional, you know, popular music. and i was driven to want to do that. >> and i saw what the trainers did. and i said, that's what i want to do. >> one of the trainers there, he

goes, what are you doing out there? you should be a trainer. i said, i don't know how to train animals. i've never trained animals in my life. >> how do you prepare yourself with an encounter with an 8,000 pound orca. >> i thought you needed a masters 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 and 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 sea world 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 wet suit and get in the water. >> hi, mom. >> i was scared out of my whits. >> first of all, i put my wet suit on backwards because i was raised on a farm in virginia.

my first thought and memory of that time was that dolphins are a lot bigger than they look when you get in the water next to them. >> well, i watched this sea lion and otter show and this guy mike moracco, he comes out during the show with a dress on as dorky in a dress with the sea lion, the coward sea lion and walking along with a basket. i thought i will never ever do that, you know. two months later, hi, i'm dorky. walking out on stage with the sea lion. >> i was overwhelmed and i was so excited. i mean, just seeing a killer whale is breathtaking. >> i was just in awe. it's shocking to see how large

they are and how beautiful they are. >> being, you know, in the presence of the killer whales was just inspiring and amazing and i remember seeing them for the first time, not just being able to believe how huge they were. you're there because you want to train killer whales and that's your goal. i didn't know it was going to happen, so i wasn't expecting it and one day they say okay, sam, you're ready to go. you're going to stand on the whale, you're going to dive off the whale. the whale will swim under you and pick you up again and you'll do a perimeter ride around the pool. they just told me to go do it and i did it. wow, i did -- i just rode a killer whale. >> when you look into their eyes, you know somebody is home. somebody is looking back.

you form a very personal relationship with your animal. >> there is something absolutely amazing about working with an animal. you are a team. and you build a relationship together, and you both understand the goal, and you help each other. >> i've been with this whale since i was 18 years old. i've seen her have all four babies. we've grown up together. >> that's the joy i got out of it is a relationship like i never had. >> i have to know, are you nervous? >> i'm scared. >> no. >> nice hair, jeff. [ laughter ]

>> jeff ventre will go over there. >> that's dawn. >> wow. >> i'm going to be a supervisor one day. >> i knew dawn when she was new. she was a great person to work with, and she obviously blossomed into one of seaworld's best trainers. >> this is dawn brancheau, the senior trainer here. >> i guess you can say i knew dawn in a past life. >> it a tough job, isn't it? >> we do go through a lot of physical exertion. you do a lot of deep water work, breath holds, high-energy behaviors with the animals. they are giving out energy, too, but we're working together and having fun. >> she's beautiful, blonde, athletic, friendly, everybody loves dawn. >> i mean this so sincerely, watching you perform yesterday, you are amazing. >> thank you. >> you really are. >> she captured what it means to be a seaworld trainer. she had so much experience that it made me realize what happened

to her really could have happened to anyone. >> this is detective rivera with the orange county sheriff's office. today's date is february 24th, 2010. in the room with me is thomas george tobin, is that correct? >> correct. >> did you see any blood in the water or anything like that? >> well, that's part of it. she was scalped, and there was no blood. >> okay. >> so pretty much we knew then the heart wasn't beating. >> once they were able to pull her away, how did he let go? >> he didn't. >> he never let go of the -- >> of the arm. >> he swallowed it. >> so the arm is nowhere -- >> right. >> on behalf of the federal government, he is basically suggesting that swimming with orcas is inherently dangerous and you can't predict the outcome when you enter the water

or their environment. >> the crux of the case, stay out of the proximity of the animals and you won't get killed. >> it will have a ripple effect through the whole industry. this was national headline news. >> seaworld whale performances may never be the same. >> right now the theme park is arguing in court to keep the whale trainers in the world, something osha says is extremely dangerous. >> these are wild animals and they are unpredictable because we don't speak whale. we don't speak whale. we don't speak tiger. we don't speak monkey. >> tempers flared when osha's attorneys suggested seaworld only made changes after dawn brancheau's death outraged the public. >> osha doesn't want the trainers going back in the water without a physical barrier between them and the whales. >> being in close proximity is too dangerous. >> they won't be getting in the water and riding on whales, things like that? >> if you were in a bathtub for 25 years, don't you think you

would get a little irritated, aggravated, maybe a little psychotic? >> the situation with dawn brancheau didn't just happen. it's not a singular event. you have to go back over 20 years to understand this. >> it was a really exciting thing to do until everybody wanted to do it. >> what were they telling you you were going to do? >> capture orcas. >> they had aircraft, spotters, speedboats, they had bombs they were throwing in the water. they were lighting their bombs with torches in their boats and were throwing them as fast as they could to herd the whales into coves.

but the orcas had been caught before, and they knew what was going on, and they knew their young ones would be taken from them so the adults without young went east into a cul-de-sac and the boats followed them thinking they were all going that way while the mothers with babies went north. but the capture teams had aircraft, and they have to come up for air eventually. and when they did, the capture teams alerted the boats and said oh, no, they're going north. the ones with the babies. so the speedboats caught them there and herded them in. and then they had fishing boats with same nets that would stretch across so none could leave, and then they could just pick out the young ones. >> we were only after the little ones, and the little ones, you know, big animal still, but i was told because of shipping

costs, that's why we only take the little ones. >> they had the young ones that they wanted in the corrals, so they dropped the same nets and all the others could have left, but they stayed. >> they were trying to get the young orca in the stretcher and the whole family is out here 25 yards away maybe in a big line and they're communicating back and forth. well, you understand then what you're doing, you know. i lost it. i mean, i just started crying. i didn't stop working, but i, you know, just couldn't handle it.

just like kidnapping a little kid away from a mother. everybody is watching, what can you do? but the worst thing i could think of, you know, i can't think of any worse than that. now, this really sounds bad, but when the whole hunt was over, there were three dead whales in the net, and so they had peter and brian and i cut the whales open, fill them with rocks and put anchors on their tail and sink them. well, really, i didn't even think about it being illegal at that point. i thought it was a p.r. thing. >> they were finally ejected from the state of washington by

a court order in 1976. it was seaworld by name that was told do not come back to washington to capture whales. without missing a beat, they went from washington to iceland and began capturing there. >> i've been part of a revolution and two change of presidents in central and south america and seen some things that it's hard to believe, but this is the worst thing that i've ever done is hunt that whale. ♪

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sealand has been a part of victoria for over 20 years. we specialize in the care and display of killer whales. >> by the time i started he was 4.

he was up to 16 feet long and weighed 4,000 pounds. i had actually seen tilikum quite a number of times. he was right across the street here in victoria. all sealand was was a net hanging in a marina with a float around it. >> tilikum was the one we really loved to work with. he was very well behaved and he was always eager to please. >> when he was first introduced, everything went fine and dandy but the previous head trainer used techniques that involved punishment. he would team a trained orca with tilikum who was untrained and send them to do the same behavior. if tilikum didn't do it, both animals were punished. deprived of food. this caused a lot of frustration with the larger animal, established animal and would in

turn get frustrated with tilikum and rake him with his teeth. >> there would be times during certain seasons that tilikum would be covered head to toe with rakes. rakes are teeth on teeth and raking the skin and from head to the you could see blood and scratches and he would be raked up. >> both females would gang up on him. tilikum was the one we trusted. we never were concerned about tilikum. the issue really was we stored these whales at night in what we called a module. which was 20 feet deep across and probably 30 feet deep. as a safety precaution because we were worried about people cutting the net and letting them go and no lights out. so there is no stimulation, just in a dark metal 20 foot by 30 foot pool for 2/3 of their life. >> when we first started, they were quite small and quite young, so they fit in there quite nicely, but they were immobile for the most part. >> it didn't feel good.

it just didn't. and it -- it was just wrong. >> we started having difficulty getting them all into this one small steel box, to be honest. that's what it was. it was a floating steel box. >> that's where food deprivation would come in. we would hold back food and they would know if they were in the modular they would get food, so if they were hungry enough, they went in there. >> during the winter, that would be 5:00 at night until 7:00 in the morning. >> when you let them out, you'd see new tooth rakes and sometimes blood. >> closing that door on him and knowing that he's locked in there for the whole night is like -- it's a stab. it's whoa. >> if that is true, it's not only inhumane, and i'll tell them so, but it probably led to what i think is a psychosis that he was on a hair trigger. he would kill.

>> an employee is dead after an encounter. >> at a canadian park called sealand of the pacific. >> the victim keltie byrne was a championship swimmer and a part-time worker at sealand. >> rescuers used a huge net. >> efforts were hindered by the agitated whales. >> i would like to use this summer but my more immediate goal is to swim fast at nationals. >> it was sort of a cloudy gray day, and we were looking for something to do, so we thought why not go to sealand? it was kind of like this dingy pool with these whales. >> it just felt a little bit like an amazement park that was kind of on its last legs and everything was a bit gray. >> yeah, it was like a swimming pool. >> yeah.

>> three whales in a swimming pool. >> yeah. and they would come up and touch the ball, and there was -- i think there was some tail splashing and there was some -- >> jumping. >> -- with the fish. >> they hold the fish in the whales jump up. i remember saying, oh, what a fun job, you know. she's so lucky. and then i saw her walking with her rubber boots and she tripped and her foot just dipped into the edge of the pool, and she lost her balance and fell in, and she was pushing her way up to get out of the pool, and the whale zoomed over, grabbed her boot and pulled her back in. at first, i didn't think it was that serious because you see -- you see the trainer in the pool with the whale and you think, oh, well, you know, the whales are used to that, you know, then all of a sudden it started getting -- there was more swimming, more activity, more thrashing, and she was starting to get panicked and then as it progressed, you started to realize well, something is not

right here. >> she started to scream. and she started looking around and her eyes were like bigger and bigger and realizing that i really am in trouble here. >> and then they would pull her under, and then they would come up and when she -- when they came up she would be help me, help me, and then they would take her down again. >> and she would be submerged for several seconds up to, i don't know, maybe a minute. you don't -- you're not keeping track. >> so, you know, it was harder and harder for her to, you know, to, you know, get the air in because she was screaming. and my sister remembers her saying i don't want to die. condolences to keltie's family. >> yeah. that we couldn't help her. it was pretty wretched. >> sealand closed. it's probably a good thing. i mean, it was a little pond, and i think the owner, you know,

made the right decision for whatever reasons. i don't believe he's a bad guy, a bad man. i think he was shocked by the whole affair too. >> the blush was gone from the business, and he decided that that was it. we should shut down. >> no one ever contacted us. there was an inquest. no one ever asked us to say what happened. you know, we just left. >> there was no big lawsuits afterwards, and there is no memorial and, you know, the only thing remaining of keltie byrne is, you know, what's left in the folks' minds who recall the case. >> so in the newspaper articles, the cause of death is that she drowned accidently, but, you know, she was pulled under by the whale. >> well, there is a bit of smoke and mirrors going on. i mean, one of the fundamental facts is that none of the witnesses were clear about which whale pulled keltie in. >> it was the large whale tilikum, the male is the one

that went after her. and the other two just kind of circled around, but he was definitely the instigator. and we knew it was that whale because he had the flopped over fin. like, it was very easy to tell. >> sealand of the pacific closed its doors and was looking, i guess, to make a buck on the way out and these whales are worth millions of dollars. >> when seaworld heard that tilikum was available after this accident at sealand of the pacific, they really wanted tilikum because they needed a >> when seaworld heard that tilikum was available after this accident at sealand of the pacific, they really wanted tilikum because they needed a breeder. so i don't even think that anybody even was questioning like is this a good idea? >> my understanding of the situation was that tilikum and the others would not be used in shows. they would not be performance animals. our understanding of their behavior was it was such a highly stimulating event for them, they were likely to repeat it. >> sealand was -- we were all young and a bit of sea cowboys, and we weren't so technical and

we had this vision they knew more than us and they were better than us and tilikum would have a better pool and better life and better care and better food and be a great life for him. so it was like okay, tili, you're going to disneyland. lucky you.

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orcas' intelligence may be superior to man's. as parents they are exemplary, even better than many human beings. and like human being, they have a profound instinct for revenge. presenting "orca." >> if you go back only 35 years, we knew nothing, in fact less than nothing. what the public had was superstition and fear. >> a fight to the death. between the two most dangerous animals on earth. >> these were the vicious killer whales that, you know, had 48 sharp teeth that would rip you to shreds if they got a chance. >> what we learned is that they are amazingly friendly, and understanding and intuitively want to be your companion.

>> are you recording this? [ laughter ] >> and to this day there is no record of an orca doing any harm to any human in the wild. ♪ >> they live in these big families, and they have life spans very similar to human life spans. the females can live to about 10, maybe more. males to about 50 or 60, but the adult offspring never leave their mother's side. each community has a completely different set of behaviors. each has a complete repertoire of vocalizations with no overlap. you can call them languages, the scientific community is

reluctant to say any other animal other than humans uses languages, but there's every indication that they use languages. >> the orca brain just screams out intelligence, awareness. we took this tremendous brain and put it in a magnetic residence imaging scanner. what we found was just astounding. they've got a part of the brain that humans don't have. a part of their brain has extended out right adjacent to their limbic system. the system processes emotions. the safest inference would be these are animals that have highly elaborated emotional lives. it's becoming clear that dolphins and whales have a sense of self, a sense of social bonding that they've taken to another level, much stronger and much more complex than in other mammals including humans. we look at mass strandings, the

fact that they stand by each other. everything about them is social, everything. it's been suggested that their whole sense of self is distributed among the individuals in their group. >> five of them. these orca are going to attack this sea lion. they have been breaking the ice off and swimming around him. oh, here they come two of them look. you can see them underneath. they made a big wave. look at that. big wave. oh, yeah. >> oh, god, no, no, no. >> if you can't watch the bullfight, you better leave. here they go, look at this. three of them. >> oh, god, oh, no, oh, god. >> it's all over. >> no, not yet. >> yeah, it's all over. it's all over.

♪ >> the first nation's people and the fishermen on the coast, they call them blackfish. they're an animal that possesses great spiritual power, and they're not to be mettled with. i've spent a lot of time around killer whales, and they are always in charge. i never get out of the boat. i never mess with them. the speed and the power is quite amazing. rules are the same as the pool hall. keep one foot on the floor at all times. even after seeing them thousands

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he arrived, i think, in 1992. i was at whale and dolphin stadium when he arrived. he's twice as large as the next animal in the facility. >> right at about 12,000 pounds. that's -- that's incredible. he looks fantastic. >> when tilikum arrived at seaworld, he was attacked viciously repeatedly by katina and others. in the wild, it's a very matriarchal society. male whales are kept at the perimeter. in captivity, animals are squeezed into very close proximity. tilikum, the poor guy is so large, he couldn't get away because he just is not as mobile relative to the smaller and more agile females. and where was he going to run? there's no place to run. >> i think he spent a lot of time in isolation.

seaworld claims he's always with the females, but from what i saw he was mostly put with the females for breeding purposes and he didn't spend a lot of time with the other whales. >> it's for his own protection, you know, he gets beat up, and so by segregating him, it provides a physical barrier so the females can't kick his butt. >> tilikum is pretty much kept in the back, and then brought out at the very end as like the big splash. he was always happy to see you in the morning. >> hi. >> there we go. >> good boy. >> look at his choppers. >> maybe because he was alone. maybe because he was hungry. maybe because he liked you. who knows what was going on in his head. >> want to whistle? >> yes?

>> that was really loud. >> come on. >> he seemed to like to work. he seemed to be interested. he seemed to want to learn new things. he seemed to be enjoying, you know, working with the trainers. >> he, for me, was a joy. he really responded to me, and i, you know, every day i went to work, i was happy to see tili. >> that's cute. [ laughter ] >> you're being too cute. >> i never got the impression of him, while i was there, that, you know, oh my god, he's the scary whale. not at all. >> maybe some of its just our naivety or whatever. you know, because we weren't given the full details of keltie's situation. >> 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 odd at first was the way they were acting around this whale and what they told us

seemed 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 whale and play talking at him and one of the supervisors said get her out of there, and just screamed at her like get her away from there. like they were so worried something would 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. clearly, they knew more than they were telling us. >> ladies and gentlemen, the next to be seen you can only see right here at seaworld. >> jeff was out in the audience filming one of the shamu shows. it was a perfect show. all the hot dog sequences, water sequences went off great.

>> i was really excited just to be capturing this because it was kind of turning out to be a great show. a show that's kind of complete, it doesn't -- it probably only only happens a few times a week. >> at the very end of the show, liz was working tilikum and apparently tilikum lunged out of the water at her. >> and i had captured tilikum coming out of the water kind of turning sideways and appeared to me to try to grab liz, and at that moment, the tape became unusable. i was just kind of basically instructed to get rid of the tape. wanting to kind of preserve the tape, i actually used the editing equipment and snipped out that little half second or second when he did that and stitched it back together so it just kind of looked like a glitch in the tape. and i was like look at this. and they said no, this is no longer usable. so we had to destroy the tape. it's pretty outrageous there was no expecting tilikum to come out of the water. because they had witnessed him coming out of the water and it's written into his profile. he lunges at trainers. >> the fact that shamu has been

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it's pretty outrageous there was no expecting tilikum to come out of the water. because they had witnessed him coming out of the water and it's written into his profile. he lunges at trainers. >> the fact that shamu has been provided a safe and comfortable habitat. >> this is killer whales' natural behavior. >> i spewed out the party line

during shows. i'm totally mortified now. there is like, something like, look at namu. namu isn't doing that because she has to. namu is doing this because she really wants to. oh, my gosh. some of the things i'm embarrassed by, so embarrassed by. at the time i think i could have convinced myself that the relationships that we had were built on stronger than the fact that i'm giving them fish. you know, i like to think that. but i don't know that that's the truth. i had been there awhile and i had seen a few other things along the way that made me question why i was there and what we were doing with these animals. >> on november 4th, 1988, a killer whale at seaworld gave the performance of a lifetime.

don't miss this small miracle. come see our new baby shamu. >> i know it was naive of me, but i thought that it was our responsibility to do as much as we could to keep their family units together since we knew that in the wild that's what happens. ♪ yes, sir, that's our baby >> kalina was the first baby shamu. >> baby shamu, sea world'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 jumping ♪ ♪ shamu, she's that baby whale >> it was decided by the higher ups 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 may 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 she's going to do without her mommy? and that of course shut me up. so the night of the move we had to deploy the nets to separate them and get kalina 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 her mom katina was left in the pool, she stayed in the corner of the pool, like, literally just shaking and screaming, screaming, 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 would come out and check on her and she would screech and cry and they would 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 think i'm the one that touches them, feeds them, keeps them alive, gives them the care that nay need. they are not your whales. they own them. kastka and katara were very close. they were very close. kastka was the mother, takara was the young. takara was special to me. they were inseparable. when they separated them, 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, kastka continued to make vocals that had never been heard before.

they brought in the senior research scientist 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 heart breaking. how can anyone look at that and think that that is morally acceptable? it's not. it is not okay. [ indistinct conversations ]

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standby, dean. >> let's go live to seaworld where dean gomersoll is joining us for a sneak peek. hi, dean. tell us about the new show. >> good afternoon, richard. the new show is whale and dolphin discovery. what it does is it shows the relationship we have between all our animals here -- >> there's so many things that were told to us. they tell you so many times that you start believing it, you know. >> all the animals here get along very well. it's just like training your dog really. >> i was blind really. 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 a 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 and everything about these animals. i really know nothing about killer whales. i know a lot about being 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. >> they're documented in the wild living to be about 35, mid-30s. they tend to live 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 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. >> 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, you know, an artificial assemblage of their collection. however management decides they should mix them and whichever ones happen to be born or bought or brought in. that's not a family. you know?