Deadly infections are common at Sea World parks.
Ailments have killed 150 of parks’ animals in last 30 years
Nyar, a killer whale born in 1993 at SeaWorld Orlando, was rejected and bullied so badly by her mother that she had to be separated in her own pool — and her condition went downhill from there.
The “super-friendly” young orca became weaker while taking medication several times a day for a fungal infection, said John Jett, who worked with her while he was a trainer at the park. She eventually had to be force-fed with a bottle and a stomach tube when she became too feeble to lift her head on the side of the tank for meals, he said. Finally, Nyar died at age 2 from the infection in her brain.
“It was a really pitiful case,” said Jett, who left his job as a trainer at SeaWorld Orlando shortly after Nyar died in April 1996. “When she died, I had had enough.”
Nyar’s illness is common at SeaWorld’s parks in San Antonio, Orlando and San Diego, where almost 150 sea lions, beluga whales, orcas and other dolphins have died from infections since 1986, out of a total of 816 listed under the parks’ care, according to information reported by SeaWorld to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and analyzed by the San Antonio Express-News.
In San Antonio, five dolphins, whales and sea lions have died from infections since May 2014 and another three from inflammatory diseases, including Stella the beluga whale before Thanksgiving from inflammation of the brain and Unna the killer whale around Christmas from a bacterial infection. Dart, a Pacific white-sided dolphin, died in February from a fungal infection in her brain.
“Infectious disease is the No. 1 cause of death in animals both in the wild as well as animals that live in managed care,” said Chris Dold, SeaWorld’s vice president of veterinary services. “The number of animals that come in and die of infectious disease in our rescue and rehabilitation programs greatly outnumbers the number of animals that die within our parks.”
60 percent of deaths
Infections have caused more than 35 percent of marine mammal deaths at the parks, while another 11 percent were due to disorders often caused by infections, such as inflammation of the brain and intestines, records show.
They have been especially deadly for orcas and other dolphins, contributing to 60 percent of the deaths of orcas at the three parks and 55 percent for bottlenose and Pacific white-sided dolphins, according to the data, which was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The rates are lower for harbor seals, with 37 percent; beluga whales, with 30 percent; and California sea lions, with 25 percent, the data show.
No one is certain whether animals at SeaWorld parks die from infections more often than they would in nature, because experts say it’s difficult to collect data on wild marine mammals. There have been instances in the wild in which bacterial and viral infections killed masses of dolphins and whales. A viral outbreak killed hundreds of bottlenose dolphins that washed up along the East Coast between 2013 and 2015.
“I’m not sure that anyone” can say for sure whether infections are more common in captivity or the wild, said Kevin Willis, vice president for biological programs at the Minnesota Zoo, who served as president of the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums in 2014.
Dr. Martin Haulena, the staff veterinarian at the Vancouver Aquarium, said SeaWorld’s rates of infection deaths “seem reasonable,” adding, “I don’t think there’s any evidence at all” that infections are more common in captivity.
SeaWorld executives say captivity isn’t harmful to their animals. Orcas and other dolphins have high infection rates because their respiratory systems are vulnerable to diseases, they say. Unlike other species, the dolphins don’t have noses to filter harmful particles.
But many veterinarians, biologists and activists say captivity makes marine mammals more vulnerable to infection by creating a stressful environment that impairs their immune systems. Infection rates are higher for orcas and other dolphins, SeaWorld’s critics say, because the animals are large and intelligent and thus ill-suited to captivity. The Merck Veterinary Manual, a reference used by veterinarians, says captive marine mammals “seem particularly prone to fungal infections.”
Long criticized
The stress of captivity, along with a lack of stimulation, leads orcas at SeaWorld to break open their teeth on concrete and metal in their tanks, the critics say — a habit that is documented in government reports — opening a door for bacteria. Former SeaWorld trainers say they drilled holes into orcas’ fractured teeth and flushed them out daily with disinfectant.
For decades, animal rights groups have criticized SeaWorld’s practice of keeping orcas and other marine mammals in captivity. After an orca named Tilikum killed trainer Dawn Brancheau in 2010, the public increasingly be- gan to feel the same. The 2013 documentary “Blackfish,” which examined Brancheau’s death and questioned whether orcas become aggressive when held in captivity, triggered a decline in the company’s attendance and profits.
Falling popularity
Trained orca shows have fallen out of favor with the nation’s 83 million millennials, the biggest adult spending group since the baby-boomers, SeaWorld CEO Joel Manby said in an interview. Manby, a former automotive executive, was hired after former CEO Jim Atchison resigned amid bad publicity following the release of “Blackfish.”
Attendance dropped at SeaWorld’s parks in San Antonio and San Diego for at least part of last year. The company’s net income dropped to a loss of $84 million in the first quarter of this year from a loss of $40.4 million during that time in 2013, and its stock price declined by half over that time. Then the California Coastal Commission moved last fall to ban orca breeding at the company’s San Diego park.
In February, Manby overhauled SeaWorld’s upper ranks, and he announced the next month that the company would stop breeding killer whales and phase out its theatrical shows.
“Society was changing, and we felt we needed to change with it,” Manby said. “Orcas have inspired a lot of people, (but) it also was clear that it was becoming a really big reason — in fact, the No. 1 reason — for a lot of people not to visit SeaWorld, because of the perception of these orcas under human care.”
While animal rights groups cheered SeaWorld’s changes, the parks will still likely keep orcas in captivity for decades. The company still has 29 orcas — including a handful at the Loro Parque zoo in Spain — ranging from toddler age to elder ones like 35-year-old Tilikum. One of its orcas at the San Antonio park is pregnant. And the company is investing in its displays for other animals; SeaWorld San Antonio is opening a dolphin habitat this month called Discovery Point, where visitors will be able to pay extra to swim with the dolphins and take photographs.
SeaWorld points out on its website that it has rescued almost 500 dolphins and whales, more than 7,000 sea lions and seals and thousands of other animals during its 50-year history. While taking care of captive dolphins and whales, the company has collected precious knowledge that is used in rescue efforts, executives say.
“If we don’t exist, there’s no place for stranded dolphins to go,” Manby said. “It’s easy for someone to say, ‘You shouldn’t breed ever.’ Well, you’ve got to have the facilities and the knowledge. And we use that knowledge so we can rescue them.”
Not ‘cutting corners’
The infection deaths at SeaWorld aren’t necessarily caused by SeaWorld’s animal care, some critics say. Naomi Rose, a biologist who studies marine mammals for the nonprofit Animal Welfare Institute, called the company “state of the art” and “the best there is.”
Still, no amount of veterinary attention and medical technology is enough to overcome the damage wrought by captivity on the immune system, Rose and other critics say.
“I don’t think SeaWorld is cutting any corners,” she said. “But they’re working with what they can. They have only so many tools, and it’s not enough.”
SeaWorld San Antonio has two full-time veterinarians and another on contract, executives said. It gives its orcas a physical every month — every four months for beluga whales and Pacific white-sided dolphins, every six months for bottlenose dolphins — including blood tests looking for signs of infection. It tests water in the animals’ tanks for bacteria once a week.
It’s difficult to compare rates of infection at SeaWorld with other marine mammal parks because some parks use less detail when reporting an animal’s death. Parks such as Gulf World Marine Park in Florida, the National Aquarium in Baltimore and Sea Life Park Hawaii have often written “unknown” and other vague terms as causes of death.
Comparing infection rates for orcas is especially challenging since SeaWorld is the only company that has held a large number of them. SeaWorld’s death rate attributable to infections for bottlenose dolphins — 55 percent — is below the 67 percent rate for Gulf World Marine Park in Panama City Beach, Fla., and 63 percent for Marine Life Oceanarium in Gulfport, Miss. But it’s above the 48 percent rate at the Gulfarium Marine Adventure Park in Fort Walton Beach, Fla.
Fractured teeth
A major health problem faced by SeaWorld’s orcas is fractured teeth caused by chewing on the concrete walls and metal gates in their tanks. When the teeth break open, trainers drill holes into them to remove crevices where debris could get stuck.
Some orcas in the wild wear down their teeth, especially groups that feed on sharks that are tough to chew on. But SeaWorld’s critics say the level of breakage in the company’s orcas is unusual and caused by the animals’ stress and boredom.
“That, in my opinion, is the No. 1 health concern for killer whales in captivity,” said Jeffrey Ventre, a former trainer who worked at SeaWorld Orlando from 1987 to 1995. The orcas’ dental problem “answers the questions of why they’re chronically medicated a lot with antibiotics, and why they get infections.”
SeaWorld says that fractured teeth among captive and wild orcas is a natural result of the orcas “exploring and manipulating things in their environment.”
Manby, the CEO of SeaWorld, said the company is looking at ways of enriching the orca tanks, including by adding waves and a whirlpool.
The use of antibiotics
Critics of SeaWorld have accused the company of overmedicating, using antibiotics so frequently that its animals are at risk of developing resistant strains of pathogens. SeaWorld pushes back against the accusation, saying it offers top-notch veterinary care unavailable to wild animals.
“We do not overmedicate our dolphins,” said Dold, SeaWorld’s vice president of veterinary services. “Our primary charge is the judicious use of medications to treat illnesses after we have gone through an entire diagnostic cascade … We take that oath very seriously.”
Former SeaWorld trainers say they regularly gave antibiotics to orcas and other marine mammals, stuffing the pills into the fish they ate. Some of the animals took them often, they said, including Nyar and Unna, who “never came off fungal medication,” according to John Hargrove, who was a trainer at SeaWorld’s parks in San Antonio and San Diego for a total of 12 years between 1993 and 2012.
Trainers who worked with Tilikum say he’s been on antibiotics for much of his life. Tilikum was taking an antibiotic and an antifungal medication when he killed Brancheau, according to investigative documents from APHIS. While Tilikum is currently on antibiotics, he has not been on them for a large portion of his time under SeaWorld’s care, the company said in an email.
Tilikum’s strain of bacteria has been resistant to treatment, and so was the fungus that killed Unna, the orca that died in San Antonio in December, according to SeaWorld’s website.
“I cannot express to you enough how doped up on antibiotics these whales are,” said Hargrove, the former trainer at SeaWorld San Antonio and San Diego. “We had some whales that never came off of antibiotics. We had other whales that, they would be treated with antibiotics, they would come off, and within a month they were back on antibiotics.”
‘Best place for them’
There’s one thing SeaWorld and its critics agree on: releasing the orcas into the wild isn’t an option. After spending so much time in captivity, the animals don’t have the skills necessary to hunt and socialize in the wild, they say.
“These are not normal whales and dolphins,” Rose, a biologist, said. “They don’t know where the hunting grounds are, they don’t know the migratory paths. They don’t even know how to behave with other whales normally. The etiquette of social behavior in whale pods would be completely foreign to them.”
Manby, SeaWorld’s CEO, compared it to “putting your dog in the middle of a forest.”
SeaWorld’s critics applauded its decision to end its orca breeding program and phase out its theatrical orca shows, but they aren’t satisfied with the company’s plan to keep the animals in captivity for the rest of their lives.
APHIS has proposed new regulations that would increase the amount of time that dolphins and other marine mammals are allowed to interact with the public from two to three hours. The changes are “based on recommendations from licensees with long-running in-water interactive programs,” the agency says on its website. Manby said SeaWorld hasn’t pressed for the change.
Many of the critics urge SeaWorld to release its beluga whales, orcas and other dolphins into “sea pens,” or large netted enclosures close to the shore where the animals could swim in natural waters while receiving food and veterinary care from humans. Manby said the sea pens would expose the animals to pollution, bad weather and pathogens that they weren’t accustomed to in captivity.
“We don’t see any better option” than keeping the orcas at SeaWorld parks, Manby said. “We think it’s the best place for them.”