In the Battle at SeaWorld, the Whales Have Won

Score one for the cetaceans.

- Benjamin Wallace

As charismatic megafauna go, Tilikum is one of the most charismatic, the most mega. He’s big (22 and a half feet long, approximately 12,000 pounds). He’s old (35, ancient for captivity). He’s potent (having sired a Ramses-worthy 14 calves). He’s a chowhound (tucking away 200 pounds of fish and about 80 pounds of gelatin every day). He has the mournful aspect of the exile and the orphan (call it anthropomorphizing, but he does). Netted in the waters off Iceland when he was two and separated from his family, shipped to a shabby marine park in western Canada and onward to SeaWorld in 1992, Tilikum has been in captivity for 33 years, and age and living conditions have taken their toll. Like other adult males in SeaWorld’s 29-killer-whale collection, he has the sad-looking collapsed dorsal fin and curled flukes that come, in part, from performing at the water’s surface (where gravity exerts its pull), broken teeth from gnawing on his unnatural concrete-and-steel habitat, and raked skin from the orca-on-orca aggression that ramps up when you mix whales from different pods in a confined space. “His life has been extraordinarily difficult,” says Naomi Rose, a marine mammal biologist who has advocated against killer-whale captivity for more than 20 years. “He’s not a normal guy.”