Whales perform for 1st time since trainer's death

ORLANDO, Fla. - More than 2,000 people watched killer whales perform Saturday at SeaWorld for the first time since one of the orcas dragged a trainer to her death underwater in front of horrified spectators three days ago.

The audience seemed thrilled, applauding and cheering as the whales zipped around their tank and splashed spectators during the show - with the theme of "believe," about a young boy who sees an orca and dreams of one day becoming a whale trainer. At one point, a young girl was brought on stage and given a whale tail necklace.

"I just wanted to be here for this show. It's so special," said Russell Thomphsen, 65, who said he is a season-ticket holder for SeaWorld. "This touches so many lives."

A spokesman for SeaWorld in Orlando said 2,200 people watched the show at the enormous outdoor amphitheater - despite chilly, rainy weather, with the orca pool registering at 52 degrees. The whale trainers received a standing ovation as they approached the platform before the show, part of the multimillion-dollar enterprise centered around "Shamu" - the stage name given to all the performing orcas.

Several SeaWorld employees wept as a photo montage was shown in memory of their co-worker, Dawn Brancheau, the 40-year-old veteran trainer who was rubbing the 22-foot, 12,000-pound orca named Tilikum when he pulled her into the water Wednesday. Two more shows were scheduled for the day, and both will show the memorial.

"It was very moving," said Molly Geislinger, 33, who came from Minneapolis with her husband and 21-month-old child. She said they had been looking forward to seeing how SeaWorld would honor Brancheau.

However, she noticed a difference in how the trainers acted.

"They looked like they were being very careful," she said. "They looked very cautious today."

Indeed, Saturday's spectacle was much different from previous shows. The trainers weren't allowed in the water, meaning the whales' handlers won't be surfing on top of the marine mammals or tossed into the air. Instead, the trainers - wearing orca-like black-and-white wetsuits - directed the whales from outside the huge tank's acrylic walls. They coached the creatures to splash the front-and-center rows a few times, much to the delight of onlookers.

Jeff Steward, who came to the show with his wife, called the memorial "a very emotional start."

He said they enjoyed the show, adding: "It's a tragedy, but these things happen when you're dealing with wild animals."

SeaWorld Parks and Entertainment President Jim Atchison said Friday that Tilikum will remain an "active, contributing member of the team," in part because the killer whale show is big business at SeaWorld. The company owns more killer whales than anyone else in the world and builds the orca image into its multimillion-dollar brand.

The timing of the killer whales' return to performances reflects just what the sleek black-and-white mammals mean to SeaWorld, which the private equity firm The Blackstone Group bought last fall for around $2.7 billion from Anheuser-Busch InBev in a deal that included two Busch Gardens theme parks and several other attractions.

There are two other SeaWorld parks - one in San Antonio, and one in San Diego.

No animal is more valuable to that operation than Tilikum, the largest orca in captivity, which now has been involved in the deaths of two trainers and requires a special set of handling rules, which Atchison wouldn't specify. Captured nearly 30 years ago off Iceland, Tilikum has grown into the alpha male of captive killer whales, his value as a stud impossible to pin down.