There’s one scene in particular
that’s just absolutely terrifying. Spoiler alert, by the way. It’s home video
of a trainer during a whale performance at Sea World. At one point the whale,
not Tilikum, decides to grab the trainer’s foot in its mouth and drag him down
to the bottom of the pool. It holds him there for what must have felt like an eternity
before surfacing again, never letting go of the man’s foot.
The whole time you can clearly see
this guy’s face and look in his eyes as he faces almost certain death. But he never
panics. You see him breathing deeply while stroking the whale and whispering to
it and then it goes down again, holds him at the bottom and surfaces
again.
Same thing. He doesn’t panic. He
keeps breathing slowly and stroking the whale, hoping to convince it to let him go and
it does. But then it grabs his other foot and pulls him down again.
As this is going on, other trainers
have divided the pool in half with a huge net, the idea being that if he could
get away long enough to swim over the net, the whale wouldn’t be able to
follow, but that was it. That was the best they could do for this guy.
