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The tragic life of Orcas at SeaWorld: How stress and abuse led to years of HORROR attacks

Tamarie Tollison was sitting on the edge of a tank with her foot in the water when the killer whales dragged her into the pool at the SeaWorld park in San Diego

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA: A horrifying incident took place back in 2002 when a SeaWorld trainer was dragged down by two huge 6,000lb orcas. Tamarie Tollison, 28, was heard letting out a "blood curdling" scream as the two orcas, Orkid and Splash, grabbed her in the pool as terrified onlookers watched. Tamarie was sitting on the edge of a tank with her foot in the water when the killer whales dragged her into the pool at the SeaWorld park in San Diego.

After the incident, the park changed its policies and trainers are now no longer able to swim with the mammals. The park has always insisted that its orcas are not aggressive and that they are given world-class care.

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Tamarie's encounter at SeaWorld was recalled in the hit documentary 'Blackfish'. In the documentary, John Hargrove, a former trainer, recounted how Tamarie's attack unfolded when Orkid suddenly got hold of her foot. “At this point, Tamarie knows she’s in trouble,” said Hargrove. “She’s under the water, Splash and Orkid both have her, she’s totally out of view, no other trainer knows that this is happening. People start to scream. You hear Tamarie just scream out, ‘Somebody help me’ and the way she screamed it was just blood-curdling. She knew she was going to die.”

At this point, another trainer, Robin Sheets, made the "brilliant decision" to take the chain of the gate of a pool holding another orca named Kasatka. Hargrove explained that that would give the two orcas the message that Kasatka was approaching, and she was “more dominant than Orkid so Orkid let her go”. He said Tollison’s arm was “u-shaped” due to a fracture caused by the attack and she is “very lucky to be alive, that’s for sure”.

Orkid, who was born in captivity and weighed 5,900lb, was involved in a previous attack too. In 2016, a trainer was reportedly swimming when Orkid came up “behind him and grabbed him by his left ankle. She rolled and pushed him under water nearly to the bottom of the pool," according to a State of California accident report. The unnamed trainer was held underwater for almost 30 seconds.
 
These were not the only orca attacks at SeaWorld. In 1991, a young part-time worker slipped and fell into the pool when Tilikum, who weighed 5,700lb, attacked her. Tilikum killed star trainer Dawn Brancheau 10 years later. In another attack, a trainer was left with a broken neck and had to walk half-naked to an ambulance after being attacked by the park's most violent orca, Kandu 5.

Hargrove later said SeaWorld had "no idea" what it was creating during its breeding program, The Sun reported. He said that the breeding resulted in the birth of aggressive hybrid killer whales. In 'Blackfish', he compared the marine attraction to the movie 'Jurassic World'. “That is exactly what we did at SeaWorld,” Hargrove said. “[…] The main takeaway with creating a hybrid orca is that you truly have no idea what you’ve created because they don’t exist in nature. So all things are possible,” he said. Hargrove claimed these whales were created to boost attendance at its theme parks.

Denying the claims, a SeaWorld rep told Newsweek, “There is nothing new in these claims. The wild characterizations from this former employee – who has not worked at SeaWorld in any capacity for 10 years – are designed to get clicks, not communicate facts or science."

Earlier, 'Blackfish' filmmakers suggested that the orcas suffer psychological damage and become aggressive due to captivity. In recent days, an orca at SeaWorld San Diego was filmed attacking its tankmate a day after the death of another resident orca named Nakai. A child can be heard saying: "How is it still alive?... I thought they would help each other, not fight each other."

An eyewitness told People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which shared the video, "We all immediately saw blood soaking the water, which triggered my nine-year-old daughter to start crying. We would see bite marks and fresh wounds all over the side of the whale. Every couple seconds, two [or] more orcas would jump out of the water to [continue] attacking the hurt orca."

However, SeaWorld later claimed the footage shared by PETA was misleading. "The video released by PETA is misleading and mischaracterized. In fact, it shows common orca behaviors exhibited by both wild populations and those in human care as part of natural social interactions. During the interaction, one of the orcas sustained some minor and superficial abrasions that pose no serious health risk," SeaWorld told Newsweek. "Numerous scientific papers have been published about these behaviors among wild orcas. The papers include documented physical evidence in orcas that resulted from these same types of interactions in the open ocean."