Tilikum's life and story
Originally writing mostly about general topics, eventually I had to make a separate article about Tilikum, because I'm here for the debate and controversy and to clear up misconceptions, and Tilikum is in many ways at the very center of that controversy (and for many of the “anti-cap army”, the only whale whose name they know). I try not to draw any conclusions or push any idea here however, as it is not my purpose, but only to document his life and explain what has been misunderstood and misrepresented.
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His early history
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Tilikum was born off the coast of Iceland some time in 1980*. He was then the only whale caught on November 9th, 1983, off Berufjörður, before being joined by two similarly aged juveniles five days later, Nandu and Samoa. They were taken to Hafnarfjörður Aquarium, to be held and trained before being purchased by marine parks.
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*His birth year is sometimes put as 1980, sometimes as 1981, but due to his massive size when he was caught, and comparing this to the growth of killer whales born in zoos (where we know their birthday for sure), I think there is no way he was only two years old at collection, so I put his birth year as 1980.
All three whales stayed there for a whole year before they were sold. Nandu and Samoa went to Aquarama São Paolo in Brazil, while Tilikum was sent to Sealand of the Pacific in Canada.
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It was while still in Iceland that Tilikum was involved in his first “incident”. He was normally sweet and eager to learn, but once when he was to be moved between pools, he got upset, dragged a trainer under and tore a chunk of his wetsuit off. The trainer, Sigfús Halldórsson, said (in 2013) “This was my friend”, and that he was normally gentle, the only exception being that one occasion.
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Sealand
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In any case, on November the 11th, 1984, Tilikum was moved to Sealand of the Pacific, where he joined females Haida 2 and Nootka 4, who were both approximately his own age. Sealand was an unusually poor facility even for its time, simply a very small sea pen in a harbor, and some of the former trainers themselves claim they would use food deprivation to get the whales to do what they wanted.
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They would even go so far as to use collective punishment; if one whale, say Tilikum, didn’t know a behavior, none of the animals would get fed, obviously making the females very frustrated with Tilikum (who is already a very submissive male and has gotten picked on a lot throughout his life). Again, this is claimed by a former employee, and might actually not be true, given what other things are claimed about other facilities, but I've also not seen anything to counter it.
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Sealand also had among the worst survival rates, with the five whales that died there (Haida 1, Chimo, Nootka 2, Nootka 3, and Miracle), living an average of 4.3 years at the facility before dying, or between seven months and 13.5 years. Tilikum and the two females lived there for 7-9.5 years and didn't die, but if they had died, they would have "pulled up" the average number. There's also the speculation that one of the longer-living whales, Miracle, actually drowned because activists cut the net. Still, not a good record.
The sea pen Tilikum shared with two other whales (the one in the picture however is Haida, the resident male before Tilikum)
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The infamous “module” or, I guess you could call it a “whale garage”, is something to my knowledge completely unique to Sealand. It was a small sectioned-off part of the sea pen, where the whales would be locked in when the facility wasn’t open, so no one could cut the nets and release them.
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Tilikum lived there with the two females, performing for over six years before disaster struck. On February 20th, 1991, during a show, trainer Keltie Byrne slipped and fell into the water. As she was getting out, one of the whales (likely to be one of the females since they were very dominant over Tilikum and wouldn’t let him have a new "toy" for himself) came over and dragged Keltie in. They ganged up on her, dragged her under and eventually, she drowned.
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After this, Sealand had to be closed and the whales sold. Here is a very interesting letter from SeaWorld to the Minister of Fisheries in Iceland, shortly after they bought Tilikum. [Link] In short, SeaWorld is discussing the return of Tilikum to Iceland, and the decision to take him from Sealand before the other whales.
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“An administrative process now underway in the United States Department of Commerce could lead to an order for the return of the killer whale to its point of collection.”
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An application to import the three whales “for purposes of public display and captive propagation” had been made in November to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), where SeaWorld had urged that at least one female was pregnant, and it would be advisable to move the male as soon as possible “in order to ensure a successful nursing and bonding of the female and calf”.
Tilikum inside the module
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Tilikum’s first offspring, Kyuquot, was born on Christmas Eve in 1991, and so Tilikum was after this forced into the module by the females and was confined there. SeaWorld says, “due to the potential health problems associated with that confinement and the potential threat to the mother and calf if the male returned to the main pool and attempted to interfere with the mother or calf, Sea World applied to NMFS for a temporary emergency permit to import Tilikum”.
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In a video filmed by SeaWorld around this time (from where I got the above screenshot), SeaWorld says the following:
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"The management and health problems potentially associated with Tilikum staying in the medical pool, may be serious. The medical pool is 31 feet long, 23 feet wide, and 12 feet deep. Tilikum is 20 feet long.
Tilikum's stay in the medical pool severely restricts his ability to exercise, since the pool is only slightly larger than the whale itself. A prolonged stay of the male in the medical pool may also likely lead to the development of serious medical problems. Included among the potential problems are inadequate respiratory exchange and respiratory infection, muscle atrophy and scoliosis.
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In addition, Tilikum could refuse food. This would complicate any problems which might arise, or create its own health problems, depending on the length of time he refuses food. The basic principle of providing excellent health care for captive animals is to prevent medical problems, not to create conditions which can easily, and rapidly, lead to the onset of debilitating disease."
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Due to these immediate welfare concerns, he was then moved to SeaWorld Orlando on January 9th, 1992, far ahead of the females and calf. The letter to Iceland was written in late April, and continues about his possible return to Iceland.
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The emergency import permit had been given under provisions of the US Marine Mammal Protection Act, and one of these was that if it was feasible to return the animal to its natural habitat, then steps to achieve that result shall be taken. Despite the fact that this provision was intended for the rescue and release of stranded animals, it was incorporated into the emergency import permit for Tilikum.
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The permit also stated that if SeaWorld’s application for permanent placement of Tilikum was disapproved, then NMFS could require SeaWorld to release Tilikum where he was originally taken.
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Given that Tilikum had been housed in a harbor, around nets, boats, and people for years, and could have been carrying some pathogens foreign to Icelandic waters, as well as Tilikum’s likely poor survival skills, SeaWorld “believes it is not feasible to return Tilikum to Icelandic waters, primarily because Tilikum is not likely to survive once released.”
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At SeaWorld
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Needless to say, Tilikum stayed at SeaWorld Orlando. It would have been very strange indeed if a release had been required, since the US regulations for releasing marine mammals say the animal can not have been in human care for more than 24 months to be eligible for release (more on this in my article on release).
Melanie Holtsman
At SeaWorld Orlando, Tilikum met Katina, Winnie, Gudrun and her daughter Taima (though he spent most of his time away from the females, as they would pick on him, with the exception of Taima, who became his lifelong friend). Nootka joined him a year later, in January 1993 (Haida and Kyuquot however, were moved to SeaWorld San Antonio). She had Tilikum’s second offspring at Sealand, but the calf died after only a month. Now Nootka became pregnant again, but she suffered a stillbirth in August 1994, and died herself less than a month later.
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Tilikum soon had more calves with both Katina and Gudrun, named Taku and Nyar, both born in late 1993. Then a daughter with Katina in 1996, named Unna, and he fathered Taima’s first calf Sumar, in 1998, as well as Kalina’s third calf Tuar, in 1999 (after Kalina returned to Orlando in 1994).
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When Tilikum was moved to SeaWorld, it was decided waterwork should never be done with him, because he and the other Sealand whales had never undergone desensitization training, and, of course of greatest importance, they had all been involved in the killing of a person.
Desensitizaion is training done entirely to get whales used to having people in the water with them, and its purpose is to avoid incidents exactly like Keltie’s. So since these whales had never undergone such training, and had already been involved in a fatal incident, it was decided to act differently around them than other whales. No one ever entered the water with Tilikum under any circumstances.
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In July 1999, a dead man was found on Tilikum’s back one morning. His name was Daniel Dukes and he had jumped into Tilikum’s pool during the night. He was covered with bite marks and had his genitals bitten off, but the cause of death was determined to be drowning. (It is unknown if he got those bites before or after he drowned, but it’s only likely to think he died the same way Keltie and Dawn did, by being pulled under and violently dragged around.)
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On the morning of this being discovered, it is said Tilikum had the man draped over his back, vocalizing loudly at the surface of the water. Anti-zoo activists claim this is him "parading the man's corpse around", but that makes absolutely no sense. If he had killed the man with intention and aggression, the man's body would have been found on the bottom of the pool. Why do whales push someone to the surface? To get them to breathe. Tilikum was upset and confused because there was a man in his pool that wasn't moving, and tried to get him to live.
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Yes, he did bite him severely. But the same has been seen in wild killer whales trying to keep dying pod mates to the surface, chewing their fins to bits in an effort to keep them floating. It is also possible (and I think most likely) that Tilikum was confused by a human being in his pool (since he had never been trained for this), he was not sure what to think of this, and so first used the man as a toy, then later understood it was a human, and was upset that he was no longer moving. Animals are irrational and a whale that hasn't been trained for it can't possibly make an easy equation between "humans on land that interact with me and train me" = "flimsy thing that entered my habitat".
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In 2000, Tilikum and Taima had a second offspring, named Tekoa. It was also around this time he was first used in artificial insemination (AI), when Kasatka at SeaWorld San Diego was inseminated with his sperm, and gave birth to Nakai in 2001. This was a milestole in killer whale breeding as the whales would no longer have to be moved around parks for breeding purposes, but pods could be kept intact, while at the same time avoiding inbreeding.
SeaWorld
It was done again with Takara half a year later, and Kohana was born in 2002. It was also done with Haida around the same time, but she died while pregnant, from a brain abscess. Those three are the only of Tilikum’s calves ever conceived through AI. In 2002 he also had a third calf with Katina, a male called Ikaika, and in 2004 he fathered Kalina’s fourth calf and only daughter, Skyla. In 2005 Tilikum became a grandfather when Takara had a calf named Trua with his son Taku, and again in 2006 when Taku fathered Nalani.
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In 2007 Tilikum and Taima had a daughter, named Malia, and all three of them would be together a lot. Taima was in fact his frequent companion for many years, one of few females he would be put together with other than for breeding, and they were very close. Unfortunately something went wrong in June 2010 when Taima was due to have her fourth calf (also Tilikum’s), she tragically passed the whole womb with the dead calf inside, and naturally, nothing could be done with a whale in a situation like this (we simply can't perform surgery on them like land animals, because of their breathing), and Taima did not survive.
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Also in 2010, his last two offspring were born - Sakari to Takara, and Makaio to Katina. He also had another grandson that year, Adán, through Kohana. SeaWorld staff stated after this that they have no intention on breeding him again.
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Dawn’s death
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On February 24th, 2010, came the day everyone familiar with this event remembers with sadness. It was the day Dawn Brancheau, veteran trainer and very close with Tilikum, died.
She was doing a Dine With Shamu-show with Tilikum, when she was laying with him on the slideout. Trainer Jan Topoleski was down by the underwater viewing window as she saw Dawn’s hair float in the water into Tilikum’s mouth, who grabbed it, then as Dawn tried to pull her hair from his jaws. Topoleski only turned to push an alarm-button, and when she looked back, Dawn was gone. (Slight content warning, as we are dealing with the violent death of a person.)
Drew Bennett
According to surveillance tapes (not released), she got free twice and tried to swim to the surface, but Tilikum grabbed her again, and a few minutes later, she was dead. It took a lot of time before they got her away from Tilikum, as he would not release her. They had to coax him through several pools, until he was in one of the medical pools and on dry land (via the fast-rising floor), before they could free her. Even then, they had to pry his jaws open more than once, before her body was released.
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Tilikum was known to be very violent and possessive with his toys, and as was described earlier, he had never been trained for having people in the water with him. A human only a little more than 1% of his mass, like a 120 pound woman, might resemble a kelp bed or one of the other enrichment items the whales get, which he would not easily give up either.
SeaWorld
A 2010-article reads
“Laura Surovik, assistant curator of animal training at SeaWorld and Brancheau’s best friend, told a detective she thought Tilikum was holding Brancheau “as if she was his possession.” On Wednesday, a SeaWorld official said Tilikum had often displayed possessive behavior in the past, at times refusing to relinquish his toys.
Chuck Tompkins, SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment’s corporate curator of zoological operations, said possessiveness wasn’t considered a safety risk for SeaWorld’s killer-whale trainers, noting that trainers were only permitted to work with Tilikum from the edge of pools because of the orca’s massive size and his involvement in the drowning of a trainer at a Canadian marine park in 1991.
“He never showed any indication that he looked at you as a play toy that he wanted to own,” Tompkins said. But Tompkins said he thinks that is how Tilikum came to view Brancheau after the animal pulled her into the water. “I truly believe he looked at Dawn as an object, a toy,” he said.“
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And as a final note from that article, that I felt was really touching, “Also among Wednesday’s revelations was a brief account of how much SeaWorld treasured Brancheau. Detectives made a note that after a crime-scene investigator arrived, an unidentified SeaWorld employee dove back into one of the pools. Why? To retrieve the dead trainer’s whistle from the bottom.”
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This was a devastating tragedy for SeaWorld, for Dawn’s coworkers, friends and family, and it attracted worldwide attention. A tragedy happened and according to the people who know Tilikum, and from the viewpoint of animal behavior, it is most likely that Tilikum was simply being playful, and didn’t mean to hurt Dawn. I mean this in the way of a 6 ton top predator: not playful as in, “Wow, Dawn, we’re having so much fun playing together”, but playful as in, “This is my toy that I can chew and pull and I think it’s fun”.
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A different theory came to light when I was originally wrote this article, due to how he acted with Daniel Dukes, and due to what was said in the article quoted above.
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He had got Dawn's hair stuck in his mouth, then another trainer pushed an alarm button, and after that, he pulled her in. I am being very careful here as I was not there and can only put puzzle pieces together and in no way want to put blame on anyone, but perhaps the sound of the alarm caused him to pull her in, and the subsequent noise and panic of the people around agitated Tilikum, causing him to want to keep Dawn close, to "protect her". If you have spent time around animals, in particular more intelligent animals, they can be incredibly irrational, and hurt you when they mean to protect you. And this was no dog, horse or parrot. This was a whale 100 times larger than a woman.
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Witnesses said he was very violent in the water when he pulled her in, which could very well be from "freaking out" due to the alarm and people screaming, and so in his irrational brain, he wanted to keep Dawn "safe" and prevent her from leaving, because as we saw in decades of his interactions with his trainers, he loved them. He loved her. And even the stranger Daniel Dukes, he was upset and tried to get to breathe. Everything the likes of Blackfish told us about Tilikum, how he hated humans and wanted "revenge", is a lie.
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Dawn's death was determined to be an accident, through drowning and blunt force trauma. Detailed autopsy report exists here. (I in no way mean to be disrespectful through posting that, an amazing person was lost and we all wish it hadn’t happened, but horrible lies have been spread about it for years and this can only be cleared by sharing the facts.)
Melanie Holtsman
Trainer safety
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My personal (and unprofessional) opinion is that SeaWorld could have been more careful with him, to not have a trainer laying with him in the shallows, but they also said that they had no reason to think he would actually pull someone into his environment, and that is true. While I don't know the exact ins and outs of safety precautions around Tilikum pre-February 2010, it has been said (by Carolyn Hennessy on Animal Magnetism), that Dawn was in fact breaking safety protocol by laying down with him in the shallows. Note that the slideout in that particular pool is not on dry land, but with water a foot deep. In the very last footage of her before the attack, she was laying down with her entire body in the shallows, by Tilikum's mouth.
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Since Dawn’s death however, many new safety measures were taken into place. The pool where Dawn died had a fast-rising floor installed (later removed again, likely because SeaWorld was intending to return to waterwork, but then scrapped this after the Blackfish debacle), so if something like this were to happen again, the whale and trainer can soon be on dry land, and the trainer is saved.
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In 2014, they introuced new safety vests the trainers wear at all times, equipped with, among other things, an air-supply (these, as well, were scrapped some years later). It is doubtful they could have saved Dawn, but in some situations, it could mean the difference between life and death, as does the fast-rising floor. (The floor is in the medical pools and was for some years in the 2010s in the Dine with Shamu-pool, but is - as far as I’ve been told - impossible to install into the main show pool.)
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There are of course also the specific protocols for individual whales. Activists not particularly educated on the topic love to paint all whales with the same brush, so to speak, and assume they’re all like Tilikum. But as was described, Tilikum’s early history makes him a very unique case. Other than him, Nootka 4 and Haida 2 (with the same training history) were involved in killing Keltie, and Keto had some history of pushing trainers around before tragedy stuck (he is the only case where a whale trained for waterwork killed a person).
Jeff Kraus
Unfortunately, Tilikum’s last incident also led to trainers being taken out of waterwork with all whales, across their parks. They are only required by law to do this in the Orlando park, but did it willingly in the other two as well, because while they know each whale is an individual, they thought it was best to really rethink their protocols so that nothing like this ever happens again.
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They still do desensitization training with all whales, as in the below videos with Keet and Shouka. This takes place in the small medical pools where the floor can be lifted very quickly if needed.
​Tilikum’s last years
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There are a lot of misconceptions about Tilikum’s day-to-day existence. During all the years he lived at SeaWorld, Katina the matriarch never liked him, so he had to be kept apart from the main pod for most of the time. It is however not true, as the frequent claim goes, that he was “isolated” or “constantly alone”. Taima was a frequent companion as I stated before, and after she died, he was kept with his grandson Trua a lot.
In the later years, Trua was with Tilikum nearly 24/7, but occasionally taken out with the rest of the pod. This video shows them playing and interacting together, and they also of course did shows together. In the last year of Tilikum's life, he also spent a lot of time with his daughter Malia, seen below.
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The film Blackfish, which I have a separate page for, created some strange myths around Tilikum, "strange" since I didn’t get these strange ideas even when I was all “Blackfished”. For example, that SeaWorld deprived Tilikum of food and shut him away in the dark. Despite all the false claims that are in that movie, they never said SeaWorld did those things, Sealand did. Completely different park, different company, different country, and no facility does that today.
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He was taken out of shows for a time after Dawn’s death, and his health (correct me on this, as I don’t have the sources on me) deteriorated. After he was taken back into shows and got his familiar life back, his health returned. He did not perform every day, however, and just like any of their animals, could choose any time whether he wanted to participate or not.
He passed away on the older side for a male, at approximately 37 years, from a chronic respiratory infection. For comparison, at the time of his death, there were a total of six males older than him in the entire Southern and Northern resident killer whale communities, totalling hundreds of whales.
SeaWorld
Should he have been released?
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Uninformed people constantly cried for his release, but a little quick self-education shows that would not be possible, regardless of your own personal feelings or ideas about killer whales in human care. For a marine mammal to be released, they have to be healthy, able to feed themselves, integrate with their own kind (what would wild whales think of him, a “domesticated”* whale, and would he spread any alien pathogens to them?), not be likely to interact with people, and to not have been in human care for more than 24 months. For Tilikum, it had been over 30 years!
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*By domesticated I obviously do not mean the typical sense when this word is used about animals; meaning a type of animal which has changed genetically from its wild ancestor through artificial selection. I mean that he had been raised among humans and trained since a very early age, and the behavior of zoological whales is not the same as that of wild whales, since they have to adapt to different environments.
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If you know anything about releasing animals, especially more intelligent animals (birds and mammals) that have to learn things, you know that they have to be kept away from human contact as much as possible, and be taught what dangers to avoid, what to eat, how to socialize, everything about what to do in a wild and dangerous world. Instead, these animals that have had close human contact for their entire lives, most times of the day, and have been pampered their entire lives, have none of those survival skills.
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Tilikum did not fulfill any standards for release, and there’s no reason to think he would have been happier if he did, and could have been released. This was, despite its flaws, his home, where he’d been for 25 years, and given the circumstances, the best place for him.
Melanie Holtsman