There are dozens of killer whales in captivity, and it can be tricky to keep track of which ones people are talking about if you aren't familiar with the industry. It's my intention to cover all them in due course, but by way of introduction, I'm going to go over the lineage and living relatives of Keet, the whale that started it all for me.
This post will cover his descendants and paternal relatives.
Keet
Born: February 2, 1993
Keet was the first of the second-generation whales to be born in captivity, earning him the nickname "Grandbaby Shamu." He was separated from his mother before the age of two despite the fact that, according to his profile, they "still showed a close bond at the time of the move." He latched on to his aunt, Katerina, until her death in 1999 and later to Corky II in San Diego.
John Hargrove described him as a lazy whale, but given his history of being tormented by more dominant animals, I can't help but wonder if Keet's "laziness" may be an attempt to avoid drawing any extra attention to himself. He is considered to be one of the calmest and gentlest of SeaWorld's whales, and a bit of a ladies' man.
Keet has sired two calves and has had semen collected for SeaWorld's artificial insemination program. He remains the least dominant whale in every group he's placed with.
Keet's Offspring
Daughter: Kalia
Born: December 1, 2004
The third calf of dominant female Kasatka, Kalia benefits from her mother's high status and dominates over the all the other whales in San Diego. She is undersized as a result of a serious illness that began when she was just over 6 months old, and was on continuous medication for nearly three years. She continued to nurse from her mother as late as six years of age.
Kalia, like her grandfather Kotar and older half-sister Takara, will play with the gates separating the pools. She has also picked up the behavior of baiting and hunting birds first developed the captive-born Orkid.
She was artificially inseminated at the age of 8 and had her first calf in 2014.
Granddaughter: Amaya
Born: December 2, 2014
Great-great Grandbaby Shamu is just over a year old. She is reportedly a somewhat independent calf, but beyond that there’s not a lot of information about her. From what I can find, Kalia has been an attentive mother.
Daughter: Halyn
Born: October 9, 2005
Died: June 15, 2008
Halyn was the first calf born to Kayla, and was immediately and violently rejected by her mother. She became the first calf to be hand-raised by trainers. When she was a little over a year old she was introduced to her father, and though males don't raise their own offspring in the wild, Keet was by most accounts a nurturing parent.
Halyn died of encephalitis in 2008.
Keet's Paternal Relatives
Father: Kotar
Captured: October 1978
Died: April 1, 1995
Kotar was a wild Icelandic whale captured in 1978, and is generally thought to be the youngest to have survived the process - he was 210 cm, or about 7 feet, long (for comparison, Keet’s mother Kalina was only 4 cm shorter at birth). After being sold to SeaWorld, he was initially kept in SeaWorld's petting pools with several dolphins before being transferred to Shamu Stadium to perform. Kotar was shunted between the San Diego and Orlando parks, and was in the first group of whales to live in San Antonio when it opened in 1988.
Kotar had a mischievous nature. He was known to prop himself on the edge of the petting pool and wait until people came close enough to squirt them with water from his mouth. This disposition unfortunately led to his death - he had a habit of playing with the steel gates that separate the tanks, and was killed when one of them closed on him and crushed his skull.
He also had history of aggression. During a confrontation with another bull orca, Kanduke, Kotar left a four inch scar on the penis of the other whale. Former trainers say he had a reputation for lashing out at veterinary staff.
Kotar was the primary breeding male in the late 1980s/early 1990s, but only three of his offspring - Takara, Keet, and Keto - survived to adulthood. John Hargrove says that the oldest, Takara, was apparently conceived through the gates separating the pools, as SeaWorld had not planned to breed Kotar with her mother, Kasatka.
Brother: Keto
Born: June 17, 1995
Keto is Keet's only full sibling (both sired by Kotar). Their mother, Kalina, was separated from Keet in while pregnant with Keto.
Born in Orlando, Keto was separated from his mother at age 3 and is one of a handful of orcas to kept in every SeaWorld facility (Orlando, Aurora, San Diego, and San Antonio) as well as the Canary Island’s Loro Parque.
Keto, along with the other whales in Loro Parque, ate at the material that coated their pools, which became such a problem that all the whales required endoscopies within a year of their arrival.
Keto resisting his trainers’ attempts at an endoscopy
The lack of a pod matriarch has also led to many altercations between the whales.
Unfortunately, Keto's personality is very different from his older brother's - he exhibits an unusual amount of dominance for a male orca, and has the ignominious distinction of causing the second fatality of a killer whale trainer.
Alexis Martinez died December 24, 2009, roughly two months before the death of Dawn Brancheau. The exact details of what happened has not been made available to the public in the same way as the incident in Orlando; what we do know for sure is that, during a training session, Keto was giving a performance that was not to the trainer's standards and was not receiving food rewards. He left his control trainer and took Alexis Martinez under the water where he crushed his trainer’s chest cavity.
Keto has fathered two calves at Loro Parque, only one of which survives to this day. I’m going to come back to that in a bit.
Half-sister: Takara
Born: July 9, 1991
Takara, nicknamed Tiki, seems to have inherited both her mother's dominating nature and her father's playfulness - her profile even mentions similar behavior with the gates between pools. Born in San Diego, she is presently the reigning matriarch at the San Antonio park. The film Blackfish documented her separation from her mother, Kasatka, and made particular note of how her mother began using previously unheard, long-range vocals to try to locate Takara.
She also is the focus of much of John Hargrove's book Beneath the Surface, as he was one of her primary trainers. In the book, he goes into detail on a waterwork accident when his foot slipped during a "double-stand-on-spy hop":
"Tiki was aware something was wrong. In the video of the incident, you can clearly tell that she is trying to stop. You see her arching to try to avoid me. But it was too late and, as I fell forward right as we broke the surface, her rostrum – with more than 5,000 pounds behind it – slammed into my side and sent me into the pool like a rag doll.
Right away, Takara began to echolocate on my entire body – it felt just like the hummingbird buzz, but I could tell these were different...
She was trying to figure out how badly hurt I was.
The wind had been knocked out of me but I managed to float to the surface. I motioned a thumbs-up to my control spotter on land, pretending I was fine so they wouldn't emergency recall Takara away from me. I needed her help. I had fallen right into the middle of the pool and knew I didn’t have the strength to make it back to solid ground without her help.
As she continued to echolocate on my body, I gently snapped my fingers underwater, signaling her to swim in front of me. I placed both hands on her rostrum as I tried to catch my breath. Then I gave her a signal for a pec-push from the show area to the edge of one of the pools in the back. Suddenly, this roughest, toughest princess of SeaWorld became the gentlest of rescuers. I never even felt her pectoral flippers touch my feet as she began to glide me to safety. She then gave me a pec-push step-off onto the back pool’s ledge, smoothly coming underneath me to lift me high enough as I floated that I barely needed to exert any effort to step off her pec and out of the pool. That last move was a behavior she was never trained for."
At the age of 24, Takara has already had four calves and is herself a grandmother.
Niece: Kohana
Born: May 2, 2002
Kohana is the second killer whale to be born as a result of artificial insemination (her father is Tilikum). She the eldest of Takara's calves, and while they were initially moved together from San Diego to Orlando in 2004, Kohana was one of four whales selected to be sent on a "breeding loan" in 2006 to Loro Parque in the Canary Islands (the whales are still owned by SeaWorld even though the Spanish park is not).
Kohana has had two calves sired by Keto, Adan (October 3, 2010) and Victoria (August 3, 2012), and rejected both of them. And yes, that is the same Keto from earlier, which means SeaWorld deliberately sent an uncle and his niece to breed together in the Canary Islands. And this is actually the least inbred pairing that could result – the other two orcas, Skyla and Tekoa, are both Kohana’s half-siblings by Tilikum, and Skyla is Keto’s half-sibling by Kalina.
It is speculated that Kohana's separation from her mother at a young age left her unable to care for her own calves. Staff members at Loro Parque were able to successfully hand-raise Adan, but Victoria died before her first birthday.
Nephew: Trua
Born: November 23, 2005
Takara’s second calf was sired by Taku. He was separated from his mother when she was moved to San Antonio in 2009 and is one of the few whales that can be kept with Tilikum without an altercation occurring. He shares his older sister's predilection for eating the linings of his tank, to the point that one of the pools in Orlando had to have all its caulk removed.
Niece: Sakari
Born: Born January 7,2010
Sakari is the second of Takara's calves to be fathered by Tilikum. Takara was pregnant with Sakari at the time of her move from Orlando to San Antonio, and it has been speculated by trainer John Hargrove that she established dominance quickly in part to ensure the safety of her calf (two of the bull orcas in San Antonio had created an unstable social environment prior to her arrival).
Niece: Kamea
Born: December 6, 2013
Like her older sister Kohana, Kamea was conceived via artificial insemination, but this time the father was captured Argentinean whale Kshamenk from Buenos Aires’ Mundo Marino park.
On the off-chance you've never been to Buenos Aires, this is what Kshamenk's tank looks like.
I find it rather galling that SeaWorld won't lead an effort to improve these atrocious conditions, but they'll pay the people who maintain them if it means acquiring new sperm.
Of course, as we've already seen with Kohana, SeaWorld has a need for new sperm. And it will only get worse when I go over Keet's maternal relatives.