Orcas

A killer whale fatally attacked an animal trainer at SeaWorld in Florida on Wednesday, jerking her into the pool and thrashing her around underwater as dozens of horrified tourists watched. The orca had been involved in two previous deaths, including one at the water park in 1999. Dawn Brancheau, 40, was finishing a session with Tilikum, a 12,000-pound male killer whale, after a midday show at the Orlando theme park. Witnesses said the killer whale grabbed her by the upper arm, disappeared underwater with her and swam to the other side of the tank, flailing her around.

SeaWorld officials Thursday hotly disputed a finding by state investigators that it is "only a matter of time" before a trainer is killed by one of the park's killer whales. "The trainers recognize this risk and train not for 'if' an attack will happen but 'when,' " said a report by the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health. The report, released Tuesday, follows an investigation into a Nov.

After a second day of discussions with SeaWorld officials, Cal/OSHA on Friday agreed to withdraw a report that predicted that a trainer at the park will someday be killed by a killer whale. The agency agreed to rewrite it's investigators' report to stick to only the facts of a Nov. 29 incident in which a whale dragged a trainer to the bottom of the pool at Shamu Stadium several times before he escaped.

You might have seen the big fight on TV the other night. Not on pay-per-view or HBO, but right there on the nightly news, a brief but bloody bout between two of the wild kingdom's most feared and notorious predators, the killer whale and the great white shark. "If I could stage something like this, I would not be the struggling artist I am," said David O. Brown, a former Cousteau Society researcher who has traveled the world making documentaries. "I would be well established in this world."

Keiko, who gained fame starring in the "Free Willy" movies, has died in a Norwegian bay that he had made his home after a 10-year campaign failed to coax him back to the open seas. The whale, who was about 26 years old, died Friday after suddenly contracting pneumonia in the Taknes fjord in Norway. Caretaker Dane Richards said the illness struck the 25-foot mammal fairly quickly. In the wild, orcas, or killer whales, can live an average of 35 years.

For a good time, follow the whales. The big boys of Planet Ocean vacation in some of the world's finest locations: the warm lagoons and bays of Hawaii and Mexico in winter, the clear waters of Canada and Alaska in summer. In some ways, they're like the seriously wealthy, tracking the sun to the world's playgrounds. The phenomenon hasn't escaped the travel industry, which thrives when the humpback, gray and blue whales come to town.

Nearly 700 people turned out to bid farewell to Keiko, the killer whale who starred in the popular "Free Willy" movies and died of pneumonia last December in Norway. The crowd gathered at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, where Keiko lived from 1996 to 1998. Officials at the aquarium organized the event in response to hundreds of e-mails, letters and phone calls from Keiko's fans who sought closure.

Seven killer whales from the endangered population in Washington's Puget Sound are missing and presumed dead in the most significant die-off of one of the icons of the Pacific Northwest in nearly a decade. Scientists tracking the black-and-white orcas off the coasts of California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia said there were signs the whales may have starved to death, though whether that was because of insufficient food or disease that made them unable to eat is unknown.

Officials at SeaWorld Adventure Park ordered a "complete" investigation Thursday into why a 5,000-pound killer whale injured a veteran trainer and dragged him to the bottom of a 36-foot-deep pool at Shamu Stadium. Even as he was being held underwater Wednesday, the trainer, Ken Peters, 39, persuaded Kasatka to free his foot from her mouth by stroking her back. As several hundred horrified patrons watched, Peters swam to the top of the pool.

The Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife proposed Monday that Puget Sound's orcas be added to the state list of endangered species "because the marine mammals are at critically low levels and are vulnerable to several continuing threats." The department made the recommendation based on a recent status report indicating that the population of resident killer whales in Puget Sound and nearby waters has declined 18% since 1995.

Neuroscientist Lori Marino and a team of researchers explored the brain of a dead killer whale with an MRI and found an astounding potential for intelligence. Killer whales, or orcas, have the second-biggest brains among ocean mammals, weighing as much as 15 pounds. It's not clear whether orcas are as well-endowed with memory cells as humans, but scientists have found they are amazingly well-wired for sensing and analyzing their watery environment. Scientists are trying to better understand how killer whales learn local dialects, teach one another specialized methods of hunting and pass on behaviors that can persist for generations -- longer, possibly, than in any other species except humans.

A killer whale fatally attacked an animal trainer at SeaWorld in Florida on Wednesday, jerking her into the pool and thrashing her around underwater as dozens of horrified tourists watched. The orca had been involved in two previous deaths, including one at the water park in 1999. Dawn Brancheau, 40, was finishing a session with Tilikum, a 12,000-pound male killer whale, after a midday show at the Orlando theme park. Witnesses said the killer whale grabbed her by the upper arm, disappeared underwater with her and swam to the other side of the tank, flailing her around.

Seven killer whales from the endangered population in Washington's Puget Sound are missing and presumed dead in the most significant die-off of one of the icons of the Pacific Northwest in nearly a decade. Scientists tracking the black-and-white orcas off the coasts of California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia said there were signs the whales may have starved to death, though whether that was because of insufficient food or disease that made them unable to eat is unknown.

The white killer whale spotted in Alaska's Aleutian Islands sent researchers and the ship's crew scrambling for their cameras. The nearly mythic white whale was real after all. "I had heard about this whale but we had never been able to find it," said Holly Fearnbach, a research biologist with the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle who photographed the rarity. "It was quite neat to find it."

The dolphin didn't stand a chance once it had been separated from its pod. The killer whales overwhelmed the smaller mammal. They hurled their massive bodies out of the water and splashed down on top of it, grabbing it with their teeth and tossing it through the air. "They were playing with it just like a cat plays with a mouse," Tyler Elzig, captain of the fishing boat Sea Horse, said of what he witnessed Sunday. "It was the most intense thing I've seen in my entire life on the water."

A trainer at Sea World Adventure Park was slightly injured Tuesday when she was bumped by a killer whale and fell to the pavement, officials said. The trainer was sitting beside the whale's pool helping with a sonogram when the whale moved suddenly. The trainer hit her head and was taken to a hospital for an examination.

After a second day of discussions with SeaWorld officials, Cal/OSHA on Friday agreed to withdraw a report that predicted that a trainer at the park will someday be killed by a killer whale. The agency agreed to rewrite it's investigators' report to stick to only the facts of a Nov. 29 incident in which a whale dragged a trainer to the bottom of the pool at Shamu Stadium several times before he escaped.

SeaWorld officials Thursday hotly disputed a finding by state investigators that it is "only a matter of time" before a trainer is killed by one of the park's killer whales. "The trainers recognize this risk and train not for 'if' an attack will happen but 'when,' " said a report by the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health. The report, released Tuesday, follows an investigation into a Nov.

Officials at SeaWorld Adventure Park ordered a "complete" investigation Thursday into why a 5,000-pound killer whale injured a veteran trainer and dragged him to the bottom of a 36-foot-deep pool at Shamu Stadium. Even as he was being held underwater Wednesday, the trainer, Ken Peters, 39, persuaded Kasatka to free his foot from her mouth by stroking her back. As several hundred horrified patrons watched, Peters swam to the top of the pool.

Back in December, we wrote about Luna, a sociable young orca that had adopted the waters off this remote inlet town as its home almost five years ago. A dolphin-sized 2-year-old when he showed up alone in Nootka Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island, the orca would often rub up against boats, spray people beside the dock and allow residents to pet him and rub his tongue.