Tilikum, a life stolen. Photo by Colleen Gorman, Tilikum’s angel on earth.
Page will be updated as news comes in.
Six SRKW deaths, young and old, in 2016.This fragile endangered population cannot withstand this kind of disaster. There are as of January 6, 2016 78 SRKWs left, from an historic possible high of 200 before Pacific Northwest wild captures decimated the family groups.
Just a few days ago, the announcement that Granny, Southern Resident matriarch, leader, historian, is presumed dead at about 104, not having been seen since October 2016. Now Tilikum, wild caught in Iceland, not a Southern Resident, but so well known all over the world as a result of activists’ work (eg Colleen Gorman of The Orca Project), and Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s “Blackfish“.
http://www.whaleresearch.com/single-post/2017/01/05/Goodbye-Granny
“When he was no more than a two-year-old baby, Tilikum was ripped from his ocean home off the coast of Iceland in November 1983. He would never see his family, feel the sea water on his skin or experience freedom again. Instead, he was sold to the highest bidder. “
“Isolated by himself in a tank smaller than the average backyard pool where he could barely move or turn, much less swim, Tilikum was used as an involuntary sperm donor in SeaWorld’s artificial-insemination breeding program, to make more little orcas to entertain tourists. I won’t even go into the degrading details of how that was carried out. To his captors he was a commodity, not a sentient being.”
.
Degrading details have been documented. Interspecies sexual abuse at SeaWorld.Orcas trained from adolescenceto accept hand jobs.
Howard Garrett of Whidbey Island-based Orca Network (Garrett appeared in Blackfish):“He led a terrible tragic life in that tiny little metal cage in Victoria … then at Sea World he was isolated and tormented by some of the dominant females the entire time he was in captivity,” he said. ” He was bored out of his gourd. I can’t believe he could live that way. There’s nothing around. It has concrete walls. It’s like living in a hall of mirrors with nothing to do but float listless. How bored could he have been? With a brain four times the size of ours that is constantly processing, but nothing to process. How did he even survive that long?” Garrett said that such conditions are conducive to creating psychosis in orcas. Especially since they are not evolved to be in such conditions.
http://mynorthwest.com/505906/tilikum-orca-dies/
Paul Spong, founder of the OrcaLab research station on northern Vancouver Island, followed Tilikum’s life: “In a way it comes as a relief. Tilikum has been in captivity for such a long time,” he said. “His life, I would characterize it as a total misery in many ways….He was kept right at the beginning in terrible circumstances in a tiny pool while his captors tried to sell him,” Spong said.
Blackfish director Gabriela Cowperthwaite on Friday mourned the loss of SeaWorld’s Tilikum, a killer whale who she said died a “martyr.”
<i>Blackfish</i> Director Calls SeaWorld’s Killer Whale Tilikum a ‘Martyr’
Sandra Pollard for World Cetacean Alliance:
http://worldcetaceanalliance.org/2017/01/07/tribute-to-tilikum/
#IAmTilikum #FinallyFree (video below made when Tilikum’s health started to fail)
Colleen Gorman and John Kielty’s The Orca Project (started it all):
https://theorcaproject.wordpress.com/
The news, when it finally came, was not a surprise but it still stung. On January 6th, 2017, Sea World announced that Tilikum, the dark star of the 2013 ground-breaking documentary Blackfish, had died.
http://uk.whales.org/blog/2016/03/tilikum-death-of-dark-star
The “Blackfish” documentary argued that killer whales, when in captivity, become more aggressive toward humans and each other. After the documentary played at the Sundance Film Festival and aired on CNN, several entertainers pulled out of planned performances at SeaWorld parks and animal rights activists increased their demonstrations outside the parks.
SeaWorld: Tilikum, orca that killed trainer, has died
Candace Calloway Whiting: “His iconic life represented all that was wrong about keeping these majestic whales in tanks. Rest in peace, Tilikum.”
Tilikum was a wild-caught orca taken from his family in Icelandic waters when he was just two years old and he’s spent the last 34 years confined. Read about his tragic life in captivity.
http://uk.whales.org/news/2017/01/seaworld-announces-death-of-tilikum
Film-maker Gabriela Cowperthwaite then created a documentary about the treatment of orcas in captivity. The film, Blackfish, alleged attempted coverups of orca attacks on humans, which it said were caused by the conditions of captivity causing psychosis in the animals.
John Hargrove, former SeaWorld orca trainer (appears in Blackfish): “He lived a tortured existence in captivity. I think all the whales do, but if you had to pinpoint one of them, hands down I would say Tilikum.”
Steve Huxter (former orca trainer at Sealand of the Pacific in Oak Bay, near Victoria BC, where Tilikum was transferred after capture in Icelandic waters, taken from his mother at two years of age) remembers Tilikum as gentle and eager to interact:
http://www.cheknews.ca/tilikum-killer-whale-held-oak-bay-died-seaworld-253261/
SeaWorld has announced that Tilikum, a killer whale with a troubled local past, died Friday morning.
Steve Huxter, former orca trainer (includes video of orca aggression from various orcas in captivity) remembers Tilikum :
http://globalnews.ca/video/3166395/tilikum-the-killer-whale-dies-in-florida
My students and I say goodbye to Tilikum, sold and moved at midnight 1992
All the Colours of the Day 