On December 24, 2009, a 6,600-pound orca killed trainer Alexis Martínez at a marine park in the Canary Islands. Two months later, trainer Dawn Brancheau was killed by an orca at SeaWorld Orlando. With the OSHA trial on trainer safety at SeaWorld Orlando starting September 19, Tim Zimmermann asks: Should Martínez’s death have served as a warning about the lethal potential of killer whales being trained for our entertainment?
A very interesting article and very detailed about Alexis Martinez death. Here’s an outline of what most-likely happened during the fatal training session.
As noted, SeaWorld and Loro Parque declined to make anyone with direct knowledge of the incident available for comment. But marine parks investigate and create formal reports after serious incidents, and there is a confidential corporate-incident report, dated December 30, 2009, that tells the story of Martínez’s death. I learned the details contained in it, but when I asked SeaWorld’s Fred Jacobs and Loro Parque’s Patricia Delponti for comment, they declined to offer any, citing the OSHA litigation, and added that they would no longer be communicating with me or Outside about the story. (Jacobs also stated that there were errors in my reporting but declined to specify them or offer any corrections.) What follows, as a result, is based on the details of the corporate-incident report.
According to the report, which was written in Spanish, Keto “appeared in a good mood” that day and had behaved well during routine animal care and a swim session with Skyla. However, the report notes that Keto often showed more interest in what was going on with the other whales than in working alone in the show pool. It also alludes to a September 2, 2009, incident—presumably the same incident with Rokeach that Martínez mentioned in his journal—and says Keto was emitting vocals during a perimeter ride and then left “control” and took off, swimming fast around the pool and bowing (porpoising in an agitated manner) after the trainer who’d been riding him had hopped off.
During the fatal session, Rokeach worked from the show pool’s main stage, Martínez joined Keto in the water, and the other Loro Parque trainers were at different locations around the pool. According to the report, Keto started off well, but then Martínez tried a behavior called a stand-on spy hop, in which he stood on Keto’s rostrum as Keto drove his body vertically up and out of the water. Keto had good power but was leaning slightly as he rose from the surface, and Martínez fell off. Because the stunt had not been executed cleanly, Keto was not bridged.
A short time later, Martínez initiated another spy hop. Again, Keto came up twisting, and this time Martínez responded with an LRS. To help get Keto back on track, he was called to a shallow ledge across the pool from the main stage, and when he obeyed another trainer rewarded him with two handfuls of fish. Keto, according to the report, seemed calm. Martínez then told Rokeach and the others that he was going to ride Keto down into the pool and up onto the stage, a sequence called a haul-down into stage haul-out.
On the way down Keto went too deep, and as he approached the bottom of the 12-meter pool Martínez abandoned the haul-out and asked Keto to follow his hand with his rostrum. Together they drifted up to the surface, and again Martínez responded to Keto’s failure with an LRS.
This time, though, Keto responded oddly. According to the incident report, “Keto surfaced with Alexis and seemed calm, but appeared to position himself between Alexis and the stage. Alexis waited for calm from Keto and requested a stage call via underwater tone.” Keto responded and swam over to Rokeach, who was standing on the stage. But Rokeach observed that Keto appeared “not committed to remaining under control” and a little “big-eyed.” Instead of walking back to get a fish bucket, Rokeach asked another trainer to bring it to him. Like Martínez, Rokeach gave Keto a hand target to focus him, one of the simplest and first behaviors most marine-park killer whales learn. When Rokeach felt Keto was under better control, he asked Martínez, who had been waiting patiently near the center of the pool, to swim slowly toward the slide-over (a ramp connecting the show pool to the back pools) at the edge of the main stage so he could get out of the water. Notably, the incident report makes no mention of Rokeach feeding Keto any fish.
As Martínez started to paddle gently through the water, the report indicates, Keto took note and started to lean in his direction. Sensing he was about to lose control, Rokeach gave Keto another hand target. This time Keto ignored it. He went after Martínez, driving him to the bottom of the pool with his nose. (In his testimony to Canary Islands’ investigators, Orca Ocean assistant supervisor Rafael Sanchez said, “The animal in question moved towards him and hit him and violently played with his body.”)
Rokeach and the other trainers did what they could, but a powerful 6,600-pound killer whale is the master of his domain. Rokeach slapped the water and banged the bucket on the stage, both signals for Keto to return. He slapped the water again, and this time Keto responded, leaving Martínez at the bottom of the pool—Martínez had been under an estimated 30 seconds by then—and surfacing without him. Rokeach sounded the emergency alarm. Keto took a quick breath, returned to Martínez, and then came back to the surface carrying Martínez’ limp body across his rostrum. Rokeach called for the team to get a net in the water while others raced to corral the other three killer whales into one of the back pools. It took almost two minutes to get Keto out of the show pool and secure the gate between the pools (Keto slowed the process by about a minute by interfering with the gate as trainers tried to close it).
By this point, Martínez—apart from the brief moment Keto brought him to the surface—had been on the bottom of the pool for almost 3 minutes. Rokeach and another trainer dove in and resurfaced with Martínez, who was unconscious and had blood coming from his nose and mouth. A distraught Rokeach immediately initiated CPR. A defibrillator was brought out, and Loro Parque called for an ambulance. But Martínez was never revived.
Loro Parque issued a statement saying Martínez’s death was an “unfortunate accident” and that he had likely died due to asphyxiation resulting from compression of his chest. “After completing the [exercise],” the statement said, “Alexis was knocked by the orca in an unexpected reaction of the animal,” adding that “the study of the facts shows that the animal’s behavior did not correspond to the way in which these marine mammals attack their prey in the wild, but was rather a shifting of position.”
But as with Dawn Brancheau, the autopsy report on Martínez was telling and states bluntly that his was a “violent death.” It describes multiple cuts and bruises, the collapse of both lungs, fractures of the ribs and sternum, a lacerated liver, severely damaged vital organs, and puncture marks “consistent with the teeth of an orca.” It concludes that the immediate cause of death was fluid in the lungs (i.e., drowning) but that the fundamental cause was “mechanical asphyxiation due to compression and crushing of the thoracic abdomen with injuries to the vital organs.”
In other words, at some point Keto probably slammed into Martínez with such force that he caved in his chest.
