A killer whale grabbed a trainer by the foot and pulled him down to the bottom of a 36-foot-deep tank during a public performance Wednesday, Nov. 29.
Kasatka, the 30-year-old female orca, and her trainer, Ken Peters, 33, were preparing to perform the final behavior of the show, in which Kasatka jumps vertically out of the water and Peters dives from her nose.
“She came off the behavior and she grabbed Ken’s left foot and had him underwater for a while, just under half a minute,” said Mike Scarpuzzi, vice president of zoology for the park.
Scarpuzzi explained that at that time all trainers began emergency procedures. When Peters resurfaced he began to attempt to calm the whale down, but Kasatka decided to take him underwater again, this time for just about a minute, he said.
When Peters resurfaced for the second time, Scarpuzzi arrived at the scene.
“At that point I could see that Ken was making some progress with helping the whale to calm down,” he said. “I just let him kind of do his thing ” he did an awesome job because he’s got so many years of experience. I could tell he was able to communicate with Kasatka and get her to just calm down; she let go of his foot.”
Scarpuzzi said that Peters “gently and slowly” made his way down Kasatka’s body, giving her tactile stimulation, “rub-downs basically, massages,” he explained, until he got behind her flukes and was able to swim out of the pool.
Peters has been a trainer with the park for 16 years. His first four years were at Dolphin Stadium, and he has spent the last 12 years at Shamu Stadium training with Kasatka.
“She was very good, very typical, very positive,” Scarpuzzi said of Kasatka’s behavior in the days leading up to the accident.
He explained that trainers keep daily records of behavior and officials have looked back at records of the previous weeks and months, which showed no deviations.
“Everything was really very normal and going along as it should,” Scarpuzzi said.
Kasatka will continue to interact with the trainers and the other whales as usual, according to Scarpuzzi.
“The only change we will make is, until we do a complete review and learn anything we can learn from this, we will stay out of the water with her,” he said.
Kasatka performed two shows on Thursday, the day following the attack, and will continue her daily routine of research work and training.
“Yes, we had this unfortunate accident, but it is rare and that’s how we like to keep it,” Scarpuzzi said. “In fact, we’d like it to not happen at all. So we really want to focus on all of the positive and gentle and calm behaviors and attitudes that we do all day long.”
Scarpuzzi explained that when whales get older and are unable to do some of the high-energy behaviors, such as the ones in the Shamu Show, the whales continue to be part of the SeaWorld family, doing tamer events such as the Dine with Shamu, in which guests can enjoy a buffet dinner poolside with the whale or even spend most of their days swimming behind the scenes with the baby orcas.
The trainers also have a supervisor to oversee training sessions, and both the supervisor and the trainer can decide to either pull a particular whale from a show or remain out of the water during the performance, he explained.
“Each trainer is empowered to make their own personal decision if they want to or should stay out of the water,” Scarpuzzi said.