If your a person who loves their job then great,
I worked at the NY Aquarium for 9 years i started out as a volunteer (paid 0) but then i found my way and was getting a measly 7 an hour..lol But enough bout me
Seaworld Orcas are amazing Yeah I had my special moment with TILLIKUM and always look forward to seeing him everytime i go the first time i saw him was in 1993 i never forget his eyes, he looks directly at you. We did the trainer for a day and he was our whale..lol We got to scratch that huge pectoral fin of his and do a couple of behaviors with him.. I loved twisting my body around to make him turn also. I even got a special "kiss" through the glass of course..Its a moment you never forget. Yes you do cry because its so much to take in, your in the precence of a great, intelligent creature who is looking right at you.
As for trainer for a day- the reason they stopped it was because of the calves, they said once the calves are old enough they will start it back up again. that means when the youngest calf turns about 3 years..(geez) --but i know SWC and SWT are still doing it. So what can you do.
Tillikum is a killer whale all right
ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) -
A man found dead and naked on the back of a killer whale in a tank at SeaWorld Orlando was a drifter who apparently drowned after picking the wrong place to swim, police said Wednesday.
Police identified the dead man as Daniel Dukes, 27, a man who gave his address as a Hare Krishna Temple in Miami. An autopsy scheduled for Wednesday was expected to show he had drowned, as his body was not harmed.
"There was no foul play or anything sinister on his part,'' said Orange County Sheriff's Office spokesman Jim Solomons. "He was camped out in the park and just took the opportunity to swim with the whale.''
An employee at the Orlando marine theme park discovered Dukes Tuesday morning, dead, nude and draped across the back of a killer whale "Tillikum,'' named after the western North American Indian Chinook word for "friend.''
Investigators said the 14-year-old whale -- at 11,000 pounds (4,990 kg) the largest in captivity -- may have played with Dukes' 180-pound (82 kg) body as if it were a toy.
Killer whales, also called orcas, are not naturally aggressive to humans and are not inclined to add something new, like people, to their diet, experts said.
Officials at SeaWorld Orlando said they try to keep people like Dukes from hiding in the park when it closes. There is 24-hour security around the whale tanks, but the area is kept dark at night so the giant ocean mammals can sleep.
Animal rights advocates said the incident demonstrated why whales should not be held in captivity.
"The fact that a SeaWorld patron was able to gain access to the whale pools after the park was closed demonstrates that SeaWorld does not provide enough security for whales and visitors alike,'' Naomi Rose, a marine mammal scientist for the Humane Society of the United States, said in a statement.
SeaWorld General Manager Vic Abbey said Tillikum, which was involved in a fatal 1991 incident at a park in Victoria, British Columbia, was never in a tank with humans.
In that incident, a trainer slipped and fell into the tank. Tillikum and two female whales held the trainer underwater until she drowned.
"Tillikum is used for breeding and sometimes appears in shows to splash water on the guests, but never with humans in the tank,'' he said.
The U.S. Agriculture Department said it would investigate SeaWorld's safety precautions, a spokesman said.
Solomons said Dukes had family in South Carolina and may have been from there originally. He was arrested for shoplifting in southern Florida in June.
Abbey said this was the first incident of its kind in the 35-year history of the SeaWorld parks.
The SeaWorld marine parks, in Orlando, Cleveland, Ohio, San Antonio, Texas, and San Diego, are owned by Anheuser-Busch ***
You'll never pay off all that debt on a trainer's salary.
your welcome im glad i can share with many people .
