Back in March, a lot of people were pleasantly surprised by the news that SeaWorld was ending their shows and breeding program. Their assertion that the current generation of killer whales would be the last was seen as a sign that SeaWorld was finally listening to scientists and critics and opening themselves up to change. And while I am still optimistic that the lives of captive killer whales will continue to get better, there was one glaring omission in SeaWorld's announcement: the calf separations.
This is one of the topics I see argued about the most often when discussing the welfare of killer whales in captivity. As I stated in a previous diary, learning that the whale Keet had been permanently separated from his mother at a young age was one of the key factors into making me an opponent of captivity.
SeaWorld, however, tries to refute this accusation whenever it is made, and as of this writing, the page on SeaWorld's website addressing the topic has not been altered since the Spring announcement:
At home, I’m a mom to two beautiful children. At work, I get to experience killer whale moms and their newborns. There’s nothing more powerful than the connection between a mother and her calves. It’s one of the best parts of my job.
So you can imagine how frustrating it is to hear activist organizations say that my colleagues and I separate mothers and their dependent calves. For example, PETA says our whales are “constantly moved between facilities for breeding and to perform.
That’s simply not the case.
But if you actually read the rest of the page, they're not denying the separations at all:
SeaWorld understands the importance of keeping mothers and their dependent calves together. Mothers provide support and nutrition and we do not and would not interfere with that, unless the mother or calf’s life was in danger.
Take another look at the parts I've put in bold - SeaWorld is only claiming that they do not remove calves who are actively nursing.
We do not move whales casually or automatically. When we do, it is only when the whale is weaned and socially independent.
And here is where the misdirection comes in, because it is pretty clear from the emphasis on weaning and independence that SeaWorld is counting on the average person to equate the separation of whales and their calves to the separation of dogs and their puppies. I’ve seen people make the comparison elsewhere, so to some extent, it obviously works.
There's just one problem: killer whales aren't dogs.
As you might imagine, there are vast differences in the biology of a 65 pound, terrestrial golden retriever and a 5,000+ pound, totally aquatic killer whale, but the most important one is that the dog — any dog — is a domesticated animal. We've had thousands of years and countless generations to mold wolves into man's best friend, honed their instincts among hundreds of breeds to produce trackers, retrievers, hunters, shepherds, and guards that do not and cannot exist in nature. As a result, the most important relationship in any dog's life is with the people around it. Even dogs that have no owners are dependent on human beings — you're much more likely to find strays in downtown Los Angeles than in the middle of Yosemite National Park, because dogs are drawn to people and are generally ill-suited to the lives that wild wolves and coyotes lead. Dogs have been completely and deliberately redesigned from their wild template to suit our purposes, so when puppies reach a certain level of maturity and are taken from their mother to go to a new home with a human, it's not really a traumatic act, it's what they are literally born to do.
Killer whales, even the ones born at SeaWorld, are still wild animals. SeaWorld may try to argue that they have been tamed by the process of captivity, but the fact remains that, at most, these whales have only two or three generations separating them from their wild cousins, which means that their natural instincts are completely intact. They may enjoy or actively seek out relationships with people, but at the end of the day, as wild whales, their most important relationships are not with us, but with each other.
This is where the dog/whale analogy completely breaks down, because for a wild killer whale, there is no point at which a calf is independent enough to be separated from their mother. Killer whale males spend their lives with their mothers, and while females are somewhat more independent as they begin to have calves of their own, they remain in the families and communities to which they are born and are in near constant contact. These animals operate principally by sound, not sight, and in the ocean they can easily hear each other several miles apart, so even when not in the immediate presence of their mothers, the whales are still, for all intents and purposes, together. The only reason a mother and calf are truly separated in the wild is if one of them is dead.
So when SeaWorld says:
We do not move whales casually or automatically. When we do, it is only when the whale is weaned and socially independent.
they are, in fact, admitting that whales are separated from their mothers. There are whales in every single park with a living mother in another park. The fact that the young whales were weaned is irrelevant (and not even true according to former trainer John Hargrove — he claims Keet was still nursing when he was separated at 20 months from his mother, Kalina), and the idea that there is any age at which it is normal or healthy for humans to force such a separation contradicts everything that science tells us about the lives and habits of killer whales.
Of the thirteen whales that endured this process, only one has ever been reunited with their mother: the original Baby Shamu, Kalina, with her mother, Katina. Kalina is one of the few whales to be kept in all four of SeaWorld's parks, and after multiple moves and pregnancies over only four years, it seems that they were not able to reestablish the relationship they had prior to the separation. According to Kalina's SeaWorld profile, her mother would displace her. We don’t know if something similar would happen if other reunions are arranged, but there is a wealth of evidence that these separations have been detrimental to these animals physically and emotionally.
The good news is that the breeding program was one of the biggest reasons whales were separated from their mothers, either to put new breeding pairs together or to redistribute animals among the parks when too many deaths or births occurred in one location.
But if this is truly to be the last generation of killer whales, the day will come when one of the parks loses its population. San Antonio already lost one whale last December, and Orlando announced that the infamous Tilikum's health is deteriorating. Eventually, SeaWorld is going to have to decide whether to restock one of their parks with animals from another park or to keep all of the last living killer whales in a single park.
The fact that SeaWorld's PR machine has not changed the party line on this topic makes me wonder.
Below is a chart of all of SeaWorld’s deliberate calf separations. Note that this chart doesn’t include the whales taken from their mothers when captured from the wild or the calves separated as a result of being rejected by their mothers, and that there are many, many other transfers beyond the first separations I’ve included.
Mother |
Calf |
Date of Separation |
Age of Calf |
Transfer Locations |
SeaWorld Mother/Calf Separations
Katina |
Kalina* |
2/12/90 |
4 |
Orlando to Aurora |
|
Katerina* |
4/20/91 |
2 |
Orlando to San Antonio |
|
Unna* |
12/7/02 |
6 |
Orlando to San Antonio |
|
Taku* |
11/18/06 |
13 |
Orlando to San Antonio |
|
Ikaika |
11/18/06 |
4 |
Orlando to Ontario |
Kalina |
Keet |
10/29/94 |
20 Months |
(Mother) San Antonio to Orlando |
|
Keto |
3/8/99 |
3 |
Orlando to San Diego |
|
Tuar |
4/25/04 |
4 |
Orlando to San Antonio |
|
Skyla |
2/13/06 |
2 |
Orlando to Canary Islands |
Kasatka |
Takara |
4/24/04 |
13 |
San Diego to Orlando |
Takara |
Kohanna |
2/13/06 |
4 |
Orlando to Canary Islands |
|
Trua |
2/5/09 |
4 |
(Mother) Orlando to San Antonio |
Kenau* |
Kayla |
4/20/91 |
2** |
San Antonio to Aurora |
*Indicates deceased animal
** SeaWorld profile indicates an earlier separation at 11 months