Shocking Video of SeaWorld Attack
When video surfaced showing an orca trapped at SeaWorld, Kasatka, lashing out at a trainer, it sent shockwaves through the media and the public. The clip shows Kasatka, who was kidnapped from her ocean home as a baby, appearing to explode in extreme frustration at trainer Ken Peters in front of theme park visitors. It caused many people to consider for the first time the psychological damage that amusement parks inflict on imprisoned orcas and other animals—and the danger that poses to those in close contact with them.
When Kasatka was only around a year old—and may have still been nursing—she was abducted from her close-knit family pod in Iceland. Eventually, SeaWorld bought her.
SeaWorld treated orcas like chess pieces, shuffling them between parks with no regard for the relationships these family-oriented animals managed to form. Kasatka was moved 14 times in just eight years.
Two-year-old Katina may have been torn from the same pod as Kasatka, who was captured at the same time. SeaWorld shipped the pair back and forth from Ohio to San Diego for years. SeaWorld then shipped Katina to its Orlando park, separating the two orcas and severing their last shared link to their ocean home and family. Katina lived there until her death.
Through food deprivation and other cruel “training” methods, Kasatka was forced to learn contrived and uncomfortable tricks, including letting humans ride on her and stand on her sensitive nose. SeaWorld forced her to perform as many as eight shows a day.
SeaWorld bred Kasatka repeatedly, often by forced manual impregnation. Despite having been robbed of the potentially lifelong mother-daughter bond she might have enjoyed in nature, Kasatka was a loving, protective mother. She gave birth to four babies, all of whom were ultimately taken from her. With each new baby, her aggression toward her trainers increased as she fought back in the only way she could.
As David Kirby describes in his book Death at SeaWorld, the near-fatal attack on Ken Peters occurred in November 2006 at SeaWorld San Diego when Kasatka heard her baby Kalia making distress calls from a back pool. She bit Peter’s legs, dragged him underwater, shook him, and put all of her weight on top of him—5,000 pounds—in front of a stunned audience. Eventually gaining his freedom, Peters required surgery for his broken foot and suffered multiple puncture wounds.
But SeaWorld ignored the risks and kept forcing orcas to do shows with direct contact with workers in the water.
The video footage of Kasatka and Peters was shown during the Secretary of Labor v. SeaWorld of Florida LLC trial, which stemmed from the horrific death of SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau. Tilikum, the captive orca at the center of the documentary Blackfish, attacked Brancheau in an incident disturbingly similar to Kasatka’s. Judge Ken Welsch, who called the video “chilling,” held SeaWorld liable for permitting hazardous interactions between humans and the huge, dangerously stressed animals.
PETA’s lawsuits, corporate campaigns, shareholder activism, public protests, along with new Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations, and public outcry following the release of the groundbreaking film Blackfish, forced the company to make some important changes. Parks stopped putting trainers in the water with orcas during shows and terminated its orca-breeding program.
The orcas currently held captive in SeaWorld’s tanks will be the last.
In 2017, SeaWorld euthanized Kasatka due to a bacterial lung infection that she had suffered from since at least 2008. Her ailing body was covered in lesions. Former SeaWorld trainer John Hargrove told Dolphin Project that “[h]istorically, when a necropsy is performed on an animal with this level of fungal infection, the fungal lesions are far worse internally than they are externally. It is also an incredibly painful way to die.”
How to Help Animals Like Kasatka
Please join PETA in asking SeaWorld to release the orcas, other dolphins, and whales into seaside sanctuaries. And if you know people who are planning a trip to SeaWorld, encourage them to visit PETA’s website, SeaWorldOfHurt.com, to learn about the cruelty their dollars would support.
