Tilikum: The Blackfish effect

Today, after thirty-three years of detention, Tilikum, aka Tilly, is subdued by tranquilizers, floating motionless and facing a wall. His dorsal fin is so flaccid that it hangs on his side. Sadly, echoing The One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Tilikum was punished for wanting to break his chains. Seaworld, who wants him alive, has put him in a chemical straightjacket. He is a "breeding bull". His seed is highly prized.

However, his suicidal revolt will not have been in vain: thanks to him, all captive orcas can now benefit from a new public gaze. The Blackfish effect continues to eat away at SeaWorld and soon, all companies that exhibit orcas in glass jars will have to deal with this change of opinion. Tilikum is a whistle-blower, a Spartacus amongst orcas!

At sea, no orca has attacked a human. In captivity, there have been hundreds of incidents. Why this violence? Orcas are not happy; SeaWorld explains that they are receiving the best veterinary care and the best gourmet food? No, they are not. Orcas have extremely developed brains. Maybe even more developed than that of the human brain ...

When it was revealed in Death at SeaWorld and then in Blackfish in 2013, Tilikum's story moved the world. Clearly the victim of an industrial lobby, his violent attack has paradoxically revealed all the "humanity" of captive orcas, all the suffering that these giant slaves feel, locked up in an overcrowded pit, and that sometimes makes them swing from the "dark side" of the force, to use John Hargrove's words.

Born in the icy waters of Iceland, Tilly was kidnapped from his mother and tribe in 1983, at the age of two. He later became a gigantic male, but he was still a shy male. At Sealand of the Pacific where he was brought, he was locked up every night in a shed with two aggressive females. Every morning he came out covered in wounds. And one day, at the end of his nerves, he dragged his trainer by the foot and drowned her. A little later, he killed a drifter who had probably plunged into his pool. But for SeaWorld, the moods of killer whales must not be known. Tilly's past has been concealed. Until the death of Dawn Brancheau, February 24, 2010.

Tilikum's mad despair did not go unnoticed. His miserable life, his anger, this dignity that he desperately tries to win back, inspires our struggle. We do not want killer whales to be enslaved any longer. We do not want to see them suffer anymore. We must save Tilikum and the fifty-five other orcas that are still held in the world!

Please sign and diffuse our petition for closing dolphinariums !

Tilikum died in January 2017.