Tilikum was captured near Iceland in November of 1983, 30 years ago. At only 2 years old, when he was approximately 13 feet long, he was torn away from his family and ocean home.
Most Orcas stay with their mothers till they are about 20 years old. Some never leave their mothers.
100 by 50 foot pool, starved him till he got his tricks correctly, regularly got attacked by 2 dominate female Orcas because he did not do the tricks correctly. The trainers would starve all Orcas so the females ganged up on him. Performed 8 times a day seven days out of the week,
On February 21, 1991, trainer Keltie Byrne fell into the pool contained with all three orcas in Sealand. Tilikum pulled her to the bottom of the enclosure and she drowned and she was ripped into pieces. It took over two hours for the employees to gather what was left of her. After this tragic incident, Sealand closed down and Tilikum was up for sale as though he were nothing more than a commodity
After SeaLand was taken down because of Tilikums 1st attack, he was transferred and bought to Orlando Florida.. SeaWorld.
On July 6, 1999, Daniel P. Dukes somehow bypassed security and snuck into SeaWorld Orlando. It is uncertain what his exact time of death was, but he decided to go skinny-dipping in Tilikum's sleep tank. Tilikum then reportedly thrashed Dukes around in the tank and eventually killed him. The whale continued to play around with Dukes' body until the following morning when Tilly, another orca, was found parading Dukes' lifeless body on his back. The whale had reportedly bitten off Dukes' genitals and caused so many injuries that autopsy reporters were dumbfounded as to what the actual cause of death was and left his face in such bad condition that his funeral had to be held closed-casket.
The latest attack from Tilikum was on February 24, 2010 at SeaWorld Shamu in Orlando. The crowd and the witnesses told the Orlando Sentinel that the whale, Tilikum grabbed the trainer, Dawn, by the arm and tossed her around in its mouth while the spectators watched as she was being killed. The SeaWorld workers rushed to revive Brancheau, but they could not save her. She drowned to her death. In response to the claim of the orca whale, Dawn was wearing a ponytail and that is why the orca, Tilikum, brutally killed Brancheau. Following Dawn’s tragic death, Tilikum was kept in a tiny enclosure that limited his ability to swim, communicate with other orcas, and interact with humans even further. He was reported to have been floating listlessly in the water for hours at a time, a behavior never seen in wild orcas.
Tilikum is not the only orca that has become aggressive as a result of all the stress that the whales are forced to endure in the small tanks at SeaWorld. The park’s own records contain 600 pages of incident reports documenting dangerous and unanticipated orca behavior with trainers, consisting of more than 100 incidents in which killer whales bit, rammed, lunged at, pulled, pinned, and swam aggressively with SeaWorld trainers, many of which led to human injuries, including a near-death encounter experienced by trainer Ken Peters.
PETA People for the ethnical treatment of animals…largest animal right organization in the world with more 3 million member and supporters. Focus on 4 areas, in which the largest numbers of animals suffer the most intensely for the longest periods of time. Factory farms and clothing trade, in laboritores and entertainment business
The PETA organization has issued that these animals do get sever mental problems due to do captivity, which causes these whales to attack humans. They have also implied that if a whale performer doesn’t do a trick or doesn’t perform the trick the right way, they do not feed the animal after the show. When the bill was presented in Sacramento, all organizations attended and supported.
There has been no record stating the non captive whales have killled or be aggressive towards humans. On March 7, 2014, a California state legislator, Richard Bloom, proposed a bill, AB 2140, to ban the captivity of killer whales in California for human entertainment at SeaWorld.
