Dawn Therese Brancheau (nÃÆ' à © e LoVerde , April 16, 1969 - February 24, 2010) is a senior American animal trainer at SeaWorld. She worked with orcs at SeaWorld Orlando for fifteen years, including a major role in Shamu's revival, and is a SeaWorld poster girl. He was killed by orca, Tilikum, being the only SeaWorld trainer killed by animals. However, his death was the third death associated with Tilikum, and many other coaches have been seriously injured by Orcas.
Video Dawn Brancheau
Life and career
Brancheau was born Dawn Therese LoVerde in Cedar Lake, Indiana and was the youngest of six children. She has a passionate love for animals and sets her heart to become a Shamu coach during a family vacation to Orlando. He graduated from the University of South Carolina with a degree in animal psychology and behavior. Away from work, he volunteered at a local animal shelter, took care of two chocolate Labrador, and kept a variety of wild ducks, chickens, rabbits, and small birds in his home.
Brancheau spent two years working with dolphins at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey before starting his career at SeaWorld Orlando in 1994, initially working with beavers and sea lions. In 1996, the same year he married Scott Brancheau, a SeaWorld water skier, he started working with orcas.
In 2000, he appeared on the CNN WESH affiliate and talked about staying fit physically to face the intense scrutiny of working with killer whales. She runs a marathon, cycling, and lifting weights to stay in good shape. In 2006, his decade of work with orcas was profiled, including his leadership role in a two to three year change of the Shamu show. Brancheau admits the danger of working near orcas. As a senior coach, he has appeared in various SeaWorld public performances over the years. Shamu's performances from animal trainers with orcas are considered the star attraction of SeaWorld.
She is featured on the SeaWorld billboards throughout Orlando. Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a judge who disagrees in a legal case involving his death (see below), states that "To be courageous, courageous, tough - to exercise or activity at the highest level of human capacity, even in the face of the known risk physical - is one of the greatest personal achievements for many who take part in this activity. "
Maps Dawn Brancheau
Death
On February 24, 2010, Brancheau performed the Dine with Shamu show with Tilikum, the largest orca at SeaWorld Orlando. In this setting, guests eat at an open restaurant while watching the pool show when orca has been trained and fed. As part of the final routine of the event, she was at the edge of the pool, rubbing Tilikum's head. He lies with his face next to Tilikum on a slide-out, which is a platform submerged about one foot into the water. The source states that he was pulled into the water by his ponytail; the orca movement seems very fast, pulling it under water and drowning it. At least a dozen visitors watched Brancheau in the water with Tilikum. Employees use the net and throw food into Tilikum to distract. Moving from the pool to the pool in the complex, they eventually steered Tilikum to a smaller medical pool, where it would be easier to calm him down. Orca then releases the body of Brancheau.
The autopsy report says that Brancheau died of drowning and blunt trauma. The spinal cord is broken off, and he fractures to the bones of the jaw, ribs, and cervical vertebrae. His scalp was completely torn from his head, his left arm torn at the shoulder, and his left elbow and sprained left knee.
Brancheau is buried at the Sacred Sepulcher Cemetery in Worth Town, Cook County, Illinois.
Consequences
Security
No SeaWorld trainer entered the pool to perform with orca after his death. Soon after his death, SeaWorld forbade the coach to be in the water with any orca. This internal, voluntary ban is similar to what happens after several other injuries to animal trainers. Each time, a temporary pause is later lifted by SeaWorld. However, on this occasion, the ban was compressed by Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA) interventions. This led to SeaWorld repeatedly seeking the appointment of various aspects of OSHA citation and verdict until 2014, when it accepted that further attempts to cancel OSHA were not feasible.
Although Brancheau was the only SeaWorld trainer killed by animals, his death was the third death associated with Tibetum and the fourth by captured orca. Since orcas were first placed in captivity in the 1960s, there were more than 40 documented safety incidents, with "tens" of trainers badly wounded by various orcas. After the 2006 attack, the OSHA investigation in 2007 concluded that, "The ongoing factors on the incident, in the simplest terms, are that swimming with a prisoner orcas is essentially dangerous, and if someone has not been killed, it's only a matter of time before that happened. "SeaWorld successfully challenged the report, which OSHA agreed to back down.
In addition, two months before Brancheau's death, another SeaWorld-owned orca, Keto, killed a trainer, Alexis MartÃÆ'nez, in Loro Parque Orca Ocean in the Canary Islands. Four Orcs SeaWorld was delivered by wide-bodied cargo aircraft in February 2006, and SeaWorld staff trained a group of Loro Parque trainers in San Antonio and Orlando. In September 2006, Brancheau had withdrew a temporary rotation in Loro Parque and reportedly enjoyed working with MartÃÆ'nez. SeaWorld stopped water work in its three parks for about a week immediately after MartÃÆ'nez's death.
On August 23, 2010, SeaWorld was fined US $ 75,000 by OSHA for three security breaches, one directly related to Brancheau's death. OSHA declares that SeaWorld "intentionally" jeopardizes its employees and states that the company "(indicates) Indifference to, or a deliberate neglect of, the safety and health of employees." SeaWorld issued a statement calling the OSHA findings "unfounded". SeaWorld challenges OSHA fines and security reports in legal proceedings, stating that "the OSHA allegations in this quote are not supported by evidence or precedent and reflect a lack of fundamental understanding of the safety requirements associated with marine mammal treatment." At the preliminary hearing in 2011, one of these citations was withdrawn by OSHA.
Furthermore, at the end of May 2012, Judge Ken S. Welsch officially sided with OSHA for the oral safety practices of SeaWorld orca. Welsch is very critical of the SeaWorld statement that it does not realize that working with killer whales poses a danger to employees. Welsch declared it "unreasonable" and "difficult to reconcile" with comments repeatedly made by management and with litany of coach and injury incidents that have occurred over the years. Welsch did, however, agree that the fine classification is too severe and has been derived - from "deliberate" (total $ 75,000 for 2 citations) to "serious" ($ 12,000 total) - stating that the company has emphasized the safety of the trainer, even if the safety procedures are not effective.
The court was very scathing in his judgment of the SeaWorld expert, Andrews, "the opinion," that Tistrum attracted Ms.'s attention. Brancheau with hair because he is unfamiliar with it "as" speculative "and" has no basis of fact. "Thus," The court does not burden it. "The court criticized SeaWorld's" closed system of logic, which blames the trainer for his injuries, by the circularity of the flawed reasoning in which, "SeaWorld believes it 'condition [s] all aspects of behavior." All behaviors are predictable If undesirable behavior occurs, it is because the coach passes the known precursor, Ergo, the coach is always guilty of the killer behavior of the fish In any closed system, any injuries sustained by the trainer will always be traceable to human error.This is not an inadequate operant conditioning program, it is the performance of a disabled trainer. "
The court explained that while the SeaWorld expert, "Mr Andrews concluded his report by stating," My expert opinion is that SeaWorld can safely allow trainers to interact closely with killer whales, including irrigation, with administrative and technical controls that existed before February 24, 2010 ' (Exh. C-15, p.Ã, 10), "the court found the opposite:" As noted in the section on recognized hazards, the SeaWorld incident report itself shows that its security program, either due to misplaced beliefs in operant conditioning or due human error in applying operant conditioning, exposing his trainer to the risk of death or serious physical injury. "The court reinforces this, aligning itself with the OSHA expert witness:" Dr. Duffus stated, '[T] he training program used by SeaWorld is very influential. It works. What I mean is that it does not work all the time '(Tr 911. "The Court agrees with Dr. Duffus.The SeaWorld training program is very detailed, well communicated, and intensive, but it can not remove the inherent uncertainty in working with killer whales. "
Welsch insists that his decision only applies "to coaches done during shows and not at other times, such as during medical procedures or sessions of relationships... As a guard, SeaWorld has an ethical obligation to provide whale needs... livestock activities require a number of contact between the coach and the pope... unlike the show, which can succeed without a coach in the water. "OSHA states that they will accept other protective means as long as it provides equal or greater security as a physical obstacle. SeaWorld saw an increase in the pool floor and a "spare air" system in an attempt to restore their staff to the water during the show. In view of the court's decision, even after 2010, although the water work during the show stopped, the SeaWorld trainers still entered the water with orcas during "safety desensitization training" and for other treatments.
SeaWorld filed a series of appeals, trying to get back to the water show. In 2012, the Labor Department commission specifically refused to hear the case. Because the interaction between animal trainers with orcas shows the interaction between a starfish with SeaWorld, SeaWorld argues that it is very important to his business. In April 2014, the US Court of Appeal for the District of Columbia rejected the "petition for review". In 2015, SeaWorld is cited again, in San Diego, for not adequately protecting orca coaches.
Despite the widow of Brancheau, Scott Brancheau, hiring a Chicago law firm specializing in wrongful death litigation, he has not taken legal action against SeaWorld.
Blackfish
Brancheau's death is the focus of the Blackfish documentary, which criticizes keeping the orcas in captivity, and his death evokes a national conversation on the subject. The director, Gabriela Cowperthwaite, argues that claims that orca has targeted Brancheau because he has applied his hair in a long tail ponytail and that "there should be more to this story".
His family say they are grateful that the film has drawn attention to animal welfare issues. However, they also add that "Blackfish is not Dawn's story" and that "Since Dawn's death in 2010, the media has focused primarily on the pope." Human life was lost on that day, and it feels like though some people believing his death was just a footnote. "
SeaWorld
Brancheau's death has been seen as a factor in starting a re-calibration trajectory for SeaWorld. In addition to the impact of a reduction in OSHA-based practice previously applied to previous work practices to prevent other similar events, Cowperthwaite began working on Blackfish in 2010 after Brancheau's death, initially having questions about SeaWorld's "ponytail hypothesis." Cowperthwaite's background research gave him the impression that there was a problem with keeping the captive orcas; SeaWorld disagrees, characterizing the film as propaganda.
After its release in 2013, the film evokes a national dialogue on this issue. SeaWorld is struggling with the effects of Blackfish on public perceptions, and there are several cancellations by music players who have planned to hold shows at SeaWorld. SeaWorld is converted into a public company in 2013.
MPs in California and the US House of Representatives are proposing legislation to end the orca arrest, and the Coastal Commission of California moved in 2015 to ban orca breeding. SeaWorld announced that it has suspended an artificial insemination cultivation program against captive orcas and partnered with Humane Society of the United States to work against commercial whaling and seal hunting, shark fraud, and ocean pollution and increased its focus on rescue operations.
Statutory confidentiality
In 2011, Florida issued Statute 406.136, which regulates media secrecy obtained by public agencies that describe or record a person's murder. The law is partly a response to Brancheau's death. Local government investigators and OSHA have obtained video surveillance videos of SeaWorld, which captured his death, as well as photographs, showing the effects of the attack. The news organization seeks to get these media items in record in public custody, but the family discloses privacy concerns and tries to limit the "voyeuristic gawk".
On behalf of the family, Mills argues in court that media disclosure by state institutions is equivalent to dissemination, based on the case of Catsouras, in which retrospective efforts to limit public access have not been fully successful. The consideration of secrecy revives issues similar to Meredith Emerson's murder case in Georgia; laws enacted by Georgia and Florida in response to this situation are similar.
Foundation
The Dawn Brancheau Foundation was created by his family in the honor of Brancheau.
References
External links
- The official Dawn Brancheau Foundation website
Source of the article : Wikipedia