ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) -
A
man found dead and naked on the back of a killer whale in a tank
at SeaWorld Orlando was a drifter who apparently drowned after
picking the wrong place to swim, police said Wednesday.
Police identified the dead man as Daniel Dukes, 27, a man who
gave his address as a Hare Krishna Temple in Miami. An autopsy
scheduled for Wednesday was expected to show he had drowned, as
his body was not harmed.
"There was no foul play or anything sinister on his part,'' said
Orange County Sheriff's Office spokesman Jim Solomons. "He was
camped out in the park and just took the opportunity to swim
with the whale.''
An employee at the Orlando marine theme park discovered Dukes
Tuesday morning, dead, nude and draped across the back of a
killer whale "Tillikum,'' named after the western North American
Indian Chinook word for "friend.''
Investigators said the 14-year-old whale -- at 11,000 pounds
(4,990 kg) the largest in captivity -- may have played with
Dukes' 180-pound (82 kg) body as if it were a toy.
Killer whales, also called orcas, are not naturally aggressive
to humans and are not inclined to add something new, like
people, to their diet, experts said.
Officials at SeaWorld Orlando said they try to keep people like
Dukes from hiding in the park when it closes. There is 24-hour
security around the whale tanks, but the area is kept dark at
night so the giant ocean mammals can sleep.
Animal rights advocates said the incident demonstrated why
whales should not be held in captivity.
"The fact that a SeaWorld patron was able to gain access to the
whale pools after the park was closed demonstrates that SeaWorld
does not provide enough security for whales and visitors
alike,'' Naomi Rose, a marine mammal scientist for the Humane
Society of the United States, said in a statement.
SeaWorld General Manager Vic Abbey said Tillikum, which was
involved in a fatal 1991 incident at a park in Victoria, British
Columbia, was never in a tank with humans.
In that incident, a trainer slipped and fell into the tank.
Tillikum and two female whales held the trainer underwater until
she drowned.
"Tillikum is used for breeding and sometimes appears in shows to
splash water on the guests, but never with humans in the tank,''
he said.
The U.S. Agriculture Department said it would investigate
SeaWorld's safety precautions, a spokesman said.
Solomons said Dukes had family in South Carolina and may have
been from there originally. He was arrested for shoplifting in
southern Florida in June.
Abbey said this was the first incident of its kind in the
35-year history of the SeaWorld parks.
The SeaWorld marine parks, in Orlando, Cleveland, Ohio, San
Antonio, Texas, and San Diego, are owned by Anheuser-Busch Cos.
