Killer Whale

"We have never in the history of our parks experienced an incident like this and all of our standard operating procedures will be under review," park president Dan Brown said.

On Wednesday, February 24, at 2 p.m. it was reported that a killer whale killed its trainer at Sea World Orlando. Tilikum, the 12,000 pound orca, was involved in two other fatal incidences within the past 20 years. Sea World's representative claims that the 40 year-old, experienced trainer slipped and fell into the tank and Tilikum drowned her. However, witnesses say they saw the whale come out of the water, take the trainer by the waist, and submerge her into the water.

Either way, Sea World is in dire need for some good PR because of this fatality. Sea World, located in Orlando, San Diego, and San Antonio is known as a family place, an amusement park full of exotic creatures. After this tragedy, they might have some explaining to do to all the "believing" children and parents. However, as of Wednesday afternoon, there was nothing posted on their website nor did they have anything tweeted about the incident. Maybe they don't need to explain themselves after all. Could it be that people understand that they are capturing wild animals and training them to do tricks for human enjoyment? Maybe Sea World does not see their sales dropping because of this death, so they are just moving on.

I am curious as to how all of this will play out with Sea World. Will update later this week.

Cassie S. Melvin

UPDATE:

I found the first tweet by SeaWorld about the incident.

"It is with great sadness that we mourn the loss of a member of the SeaWorld family. Thank you for your thoughts during this difficult time."

It was announced that @Shamu, one of SeaWorld's Twitter accounts used to promote this usually docile creature, will no longer be active. SeaWorld will update their fans via @SeaWorld_Parks.

Another update from their website that was posted this morning:

SeaWorld Updates

Update: Thursday, Feb. 25, 9:33am

Tilikum

Many people are asking about the future care of Tilikum, the whale involved in the incident. We have every intention of continuing to interact with this animal, though the procedures for working with him will change. We are still reviewing this incident and will evaluate the situation and make a decision accordingly.

We are open to comments from you, our blog readers. However, as a policy, any comment that uses foul language or could be hurtful to the trainer’s family will be deleted. We appreciate everyone’s understanding and will share more information as it becomes known and available.

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It appears that SeaWorld is using many media outlets to spread the word about this tragedy, but at the same time, keeping it a private issue for the families involved. Kudos to Sea World!