Safety Botched in Whale Shows, Official Asserts

SAN DIEGO —  The accident in the killer whale stadium at Sea World that severely injured a trainer last month was the result of “negligence” by managers who ignored orders to tighten safety precautions, the chairman of Sea World’s parent company said Tuesday.

In an unusual meeting with reporters, William Jovanovich accused three suspended Sea World managers of adopting a dangerous approach to whale-training, then misleading him about the extent and severity of injuries to young trainers.

“I came to this park and said to those three people, ‘I’m extremely worried. I’m upset. Please pay attention,’ ” Jovanovich said in an occasionally testy news conference Tuesday. “They assured me they would. They didn’t.”

Pressure for Profits Denied

The 67-year-old chairman of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich flatly denied reports that the Nov. 21 accident occurred amid rising pressure to increase profits and expand killer whale activities in preparation for the upcoming opening of a fourth Sea World in San Antonio.

“I have never once in my life asked a park president to increase profits,” insisted Jovanovich, stationed on an acre-sized map of the United States on the Sea World grounds, his voice caroming across the expanse of multicolored concrete.

“I have never urged anybody to increase the number of shows,” he said. “I have never been asked about trainers’ salaries. I had no knowledge . . . that procedures for training had deteriorated so badly.”

Landed on Trainer

The accident, which has brought turmoil to a San Diego institution and the nation’s second-largest amusement park chain, occurred when a six-ton whale breached during Sea World’s most high-profile show and landed on a 26-year-old trainer riding on another whale.

The trainer, John Sillick, suffered severe injuries to his ribs, pelvis and leg. He is in fair condition at UC San Diego Medical Center. The accident was among 14 instances of injury that have occurred since August, Jovanovich said he has since learned.

Immediately after the accident, Jovanovich suspended President Jan Schultz; chief trainer David Butcher; zoological director Lanny Cornell, and public relations chief Jackie Hill. He barred all trainers at Sea World parks from performing with whales in the pools.

He also appointed a fact-finding committee of four Harcourt Brace Jovanovich executives to investigate the causes of the accident. On the basis of the committee’s Nov. 30 report, Jovanovich said he intends next week to discuss severance pay with Schultz, Butcher and Cornell.

Hill has returned to work as assistant to the acting president, Robert Gault.

Sea World Sued

Also on Tuesday, attorneys representing Schultz filed suit in Superior Court in San Diego against Sea World, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and Jovanovich himself, alleging breach of contract, breach of good faith, interference with a contract and defamation.

Schultz declined comment on Jovanovich’s statements. Butcher and Cornell could not be reached.

Jovanovich, known as an outspoken and idiosyncratic executive who has not held a press conference in recent memory, chose as his stage Sea World’s parking-lot-sized map, a pet project of his that was unveiled last spring.

With the early morning sun splashing off the crayon-colored states and his voice projected through a wireless microphone clipped to his tie, he launched into the first account by any Sea World official of what has transpired at the park since the accident.

“The fact-finding by our committee showed that there was negligence,” Jovanovich said. “There was not a supervisor in the park near the stadium, which there was supposed to be at all times. It showed that three of the trainers (in the pool) had such meager training it was a wonder they could even perform the most elementary aspects of their positions.”

Three of the five trainers had only three months, or less, of experience working with killer whales, Jovanovich said. Sillick, the veteran in the group, had less than two years’ experience.

‘A Human Toll’

“The negligence, of course, had a human toll,” Jovanovich said.

He traced the trainers’ inexperience to Butcher’s appointment in 1985 as chief trainer--an appointment he said prompted experienced trainers to quit or take other jobs in the park, at least in some cases over disagreements with Butcher’s training philosophy.

That philosophy entailed cultivating a personal “relationship” with the whales and using that bond to persuade them to perform certain tricks--in contrast to the more traditional behaviorist method of punishment and reward, Jovanovich said.

“His notion was that this relationship would enable animals to feel happy to conduct certain of these procedures,” Jovanovich said. “I think that point of view has failed. I think we’ve got evidence for that.”

Jovanovich also accused Cornell and Butcher of misleading him in a “white paper” on killer whale handling, which he had requested earlier this year. He said the fact-finding committee later found the paper was “incomplete” and contained “euphemisms.”

After reading the white paper, he said he met with Schultz, Cornell and Butcher.

“I said, . . . ‘I have been deeply concerned about accidents in the pool with trainers and I am asking you, please, to be exceptionally careful. . . . ‘ I was told, ‘Yes, we are watching, day and night.’ Unfortunately, my worst fears were realized.”

He said that conversation occurred six weeks before Sillick’s accident.

‘No Knowledge’

The fact-finding committee also discovered a series of accidents “that I had no knowledge of whatsoever,” Jovanovich said. He said 14 injuries of varying severity had occurred since August, of which Sillick’s was the most serious.

“In my view, human beings should never again enter the pool,” said Jovanovich. He said other Sea World executives contend that policy may be too strict in the long run but agree there should be no trainers in the pool in the near future.