Book Review
Title: Beneath the Surface: Killer Whales, SeaWorld, and the Truth Beyond Blackfish by John Hargrove
Genre: Memoir, Science, Animal, Social Commentary
Rating: 4 Stars
I watched the Blackfish documentary a little while ago and while I did know there was a lot of controversy surrounding the parks and the captivity of its orcas, I didn’t realise what was happening behind the scenes and how many deaths there were because of these animals especially the ones that were wild caught. I decided to pick up this book because it was written by someone that works at SeaWorld for over 20 years and devoted his entire life to working with the orcas. Hargrove makes it clear from the beginning that while he works for the company, he cares far more about the animals and that was his reason behind speaking out in this book and in the documentary.
John Hargrove was fascinated with orcas from childhood and at a very early age dedicated his life to someday working with them at the iconic SeaWorld. He shows an extreme amount of persistence and willingness to learn what he did not know to achieve these goals and by the time he was in his early 20’s he was employed by SeaWorld but not working with the orcas. Within a handful of years, he has gone from an apprentice to an orca trainer because of his hard work and his ability to understand these highly intelligent and emotional creatures but it doesn’t mean that this was easy work.
Even in these early years, Hargrove realised that there was more going on beneath the surface but was too attached to the animals and the career he worked for rather than risking it by questioning the company’s management. However, he gives us a trainer’s perspective, someone who’s priority was always the animals, not the public or the company image. Through this we learn how hard these trainers must work physically to even swim with these animals and how often they get injured on the job, some even get injured severely. He doesn’t try to hide or tone down how aggressive orcas can be, whether through provocation or just because they are bored. It is in this moment that we understand why orcas are the apex predators of the water, some claim it is sharks, but orcas will easily take on Great Whites and kill them for their livers leaving the rest of the animals uneaten. Sharks have even been known to abandoned feeding and breeding ground for over a year if an orca is even sighted close by, even if the orca does nothing to the shark in question.
Hargrove talks through some of the orcas he has worked with, including some of the most famous in SeaWorld’s history. While the conditions these animals were kept in aren’t terrible by any means, they did not meet the requirements for animals that large. Orcas given their incredible memories and emotional intelligence often found themselves faced with isolation, bored and inactivity, things that especially the wild caught orcas never had to deal with before. These issues caused many problems for the trainers as these orcas would often show unusual behaviours not found in the wild and tried their best to make their lives as fulfilling as possible but even, they couldn’t be with them 24/7. The issue around capture and breeding were also brought up in the early years, since capturing wild orcas was outlawed meaning new orcas for the parks could only be obtained through breeding which was its own issue. As baby orca were often separated from their mothers and sent to other parks, they didn’t learn the behaviours around breeding such as avoiding breeding with your own bloodline, so incest was common among captive orca and these orcas were often shunned in the hierarchy.
Orcas as it is well known, live in a matriarchal society with many generations living out their entire lives in the same pods so this caused a lot of problems as the trainers had to constantly be aware of the order and any challenges or aggression related to the hierarchy of this forced pod. Many of these orcas weren’t even caught in the same place meaning that there were often communication issues among the orcas, this has been proven scientifically since we know whales that use different frequency for their songs cannot communicate making fitting into the hierarchy nearly impossible for some. Hargrove doesn’t just relay the fact; he uses these pages to express his thoughts and feelings on the matters since he was directly involved with them. However, we are halfway through the book and apart from a few incidents he hasn’t talked much about the injuries the trainers often sustained and apart from a brief mention, he hasn’t spoken of the deaths caused by the animals over the year leading to the rule banning trainers from being in the water with the orcas.
We do finally get to see through Hargrove, the deaths of two trainers within a year, one in America, one in Spain, that ultimately led to the OSHA decision to remove trainers for the water entirely. This was the driving force alongside Hargrove’s injuries which led to an addiction to opiate painkillers, to leave the company for good in 2012. He was quickly approached after resigning to take part in the Blackfish documentary because he had the most up to date information and accounts on how SeaWorld was operating having only just left the company. Hargrove himself, and others faced a lot of backlashes for taking part in the documentary, from being defamed to having the careers of their friends threatened unless they cut contact with those involved.
The future does hold some hope since the public opinion on SeaWorld changed drastically when the documentary first aired, and this was coupled with financial loses for the business. However, the only way forward is systemic change such as banned the owning or captivity of orcas for entertainment or profit purposes meaning it would be illegal for SeaWorld to own their orcas and not be able to use them for profit in shows, leaving only conservation and study as the only available options to them. Despite this we must also consider that these orcas are unable to live in the wild because of the conditions and indoctrination forced upon them at SeaWorld and SeaWorld might be the only place on Earth currently equipped and designed to care for 30 of these massive creatures. So, while banning the company from making profit from the orcas, it might make their lives worse since the company would have no reason to keep them but no one else could take care of them in the same way and they would need to be held in captivity for the rest of theirs due to being unable to survive in the wild.
Overall, there were a lot of things from the Blackfish documentary expanded on in this book, but it focused more of Hargrove’s individual journey as a trainer of these whales than on the situation. It also poses some interesting questions on the morality of keeping these animals for entertainment and profit while balancing the knowledge that they would never be able to live in the wild and creating a place that could care for these orcas without receiving any financial gain from it would be near impossible because of how specialised and difficult caring for these animals is.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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