pedestrienne

also file under "enraging"

I went to see Blackfish last week, then this book caught my eye on a cart, and I had to take it home. I spent all day yesterday reading it. Apart from doing laundry, I couldn't tear myself away from it.

Kirby's prose is really readable, although it could have been tightened up, and sometimes he sacrifices good old reporting to try to heighten the story and he doesn't need to - all those conversations he recreated could have just been reported like an interview, which is probably how he got them. And he's a little too fond of using "ironically".

That doesn't really matter, because the history of killer whales, the things that real scientists have learned about them, and their history of capture and captivity at places like SeaWorld, is fascinating. And, for the latter, a grotesque tragedy. I think the worst part is seeing "the Alliance" (ha ha, could you make up a more ominous sounding name?) throws its political weight around and lies, over and over again, when it doesn't have to. How many millions of dollars do orcas make for SeaWorld? It could afford to at least acknowledge their real life spans and needs, and try to act accordingly when designing their living spaces and thinking about their social lives. But time after time, it acts spoiled, greedy, and bratty, and through its actions shows that it sees the whales as a money-making circus act. This covers almost all of the history of orca-capturing from the late 60s til the present day, and includes the full story of Keiko (free Willy), which I hadn't really followed, and the injury and deaths of SeaWorld trainers, as well as following the story of Dr. Naomi Rose, who works for the national Humane Society. I highly recommend reading this and enraging yourself as well.

It's interesting to compare what Kirby describes and where his descriptions don't follow what is shown in the "Blackfish" documentary. For example, on p. 275 he covers an incident where 2 orcas pull a trainer into the pool and her arm is broken. Kirby says that after she got out of the pool "soon her arm throbbed with pain and Tamaree learned it was badly fractured." If you watch the documentary they have footage of this, and when she gets out of the pool, her forearm is bent like the top of an umbrella. I'm pretty sure she didn't have to "learn" it was fractured.

Kirby also falls prey to some of the same emotion-fueled arguing that leads him down strange pathways, such as this sentence: "[After Dawn Brancheau's death, the world] wanted to know why such an intelligent creature would commit such a brutal act". Intelligence does not preclude brutality.

Overall, though, it's possible to cut through the emotion. Kirby is obviously biased, but it's hard not to be.