The Possibility of a Whale Attack at Sea World

The possibility of a whale attack is rare. Since Sea World has been open in 1964, only three aggressive reports have been reported during live shows in the years 1989, 2006, and 2010. With over thirty to forty shows a day between all three parks, SeaWorld is doing everything that they can to keep their trainers and their whales safe.

In 2010 they had been open for almost fifty years, with thre e parks, and had three unfortunate aggressive attacks during a live show. In 1989 an Orca whale tried attacking a newer Orca whale during a show. The dominant whale tried to smack into the newcomer, but missed and hit the wall extremely hard. This incident ended in the senior whale injuring itself, suffering from a hemorrhage artery, the whale died about forty-five minutes after the scene. In the 2006 incident, no fatal injuries occurred, but an Orca whale tried holding its trainer underwater by his foot, luckily the trainer got away, and he only suffered a foot injury.

Regrettably, the more recent 2010 incident was much more. A 12,000 pound Orca whale attacked a very experienced trainer and drowned her. Normally this particular larger whale goes in the tanks alone because if its size, but on February 24th, a trainer was in the tank with the whale for a lunchtime show. Unfortunately, there were signs of the whale being agitated before the show, but no precautions were taken. The park reassures that the proper precautions will be taken in the future.

As you can tell, the Orca whales can have somewhat of an aggressive behavior, but with closer monitoring, the parks will be able to sense the aggressiveness in the whale before any attacks occur. At no time is the audience ever endangered because the sea world parks do their best at protecting the audience. The only people that are at risk when a whale gets aggressive are other whales or trainers in the tank with him or her.

Sea World is still in the process of investigating the incident that occurred on February 24th, 2010. Once their investigation is complete they said that they are going to revise their safety procedures to make everyone safer and to create better emergency procedures if an incident were to occur again. These changes will make the possibility of a whale attack at Sea World even less likely in the future.