The theme park’s announcement it would end its killer whale breeding programme comes after John Hargrove ‘stuck my head out there’ for four years

It was the moment of ultimate vindication for former SeaWorld trainer John Hargrove.

For four years he led a campaign against the theme park giant over its breeding and exhibition of captive killer whales. And on Thursday, the Florida-based company announced it would end theatrical performances involving orcas at SeaWorld parks in San Diego next year and in San Antonio and Orlando by 2019, and immediately discontinue its artificial insemination programme.

“It’s what I said from the beginning, this is what I wanted, I wanted this to be the last generation of killer whales in captivity and for this to be over, and I feel like now I got it,” he said.

Tilikum, SeaWorld killer whale and subject of Blackfish, is dying Read more

“I feel vindicated from a personal perspective because I stuck my head out there on the chopping block and SeaWorld went after me viciously. The only thing that hurts is that the whales I had a relationship with, that gave me everything, are never going to know that freedom. They’re a still going to live their lives in captivity.”

Hargrove, who spent 14 years working with orcas at marine parks in California and Texas before quitting in 2012 and becoming one of the company’s most vocal critics, said he believed the new SeaWorld chief executive, Joel Manby, probably realized that bowing to a massive public outcry and transforming the way the company treated its giant marine animals was the only way for it to survive.

In February, the chief of park operations, Dan Brown, and head veterinarian, Brad Andrews, were replaced after several years of turbulence in which profits and attendances plummeted, following the 2010 death of Hargrove’s friend and fellow trainer Dawn Brancheau in a horrific attack by a killer whale named Tilikum and the 2013 release of the highly critical documentary Blackfish. The controversial movie, slammed as “inaccurate and misleading” by SeaWorld executives, sought to expose the harmful conditions and harsh treatment the film-makers said the performing whales endured in captivity.

“All of a sudden Joel Manby has done this, which is very Ringling Brothers and how they listened that customers don’t want to see elephants performing, they want them retiring to sanctuaries,” said Hargrove, author of the bestselling book Beneath the Surface: Killer Whales, SeaWorld and the Truth Beyond Blackfish.

“These whales truly suffer in captivity. I saw it, I lived it every single day. These animals deserve not to be enslaved, not to have all these health effects, and things happening to them, forced to do stupid tricks in stupid shows, and torn from their families.”

Hargrove claimed he learned the mindset of some among SeaWorld’s leaders during his time working as a trainer, and later when he became an advocate for the sea animals by giving testimony against the company in legislative hearings.

“I know the people that dug their heels in the sand and whom I’ve been fighting against for four years, in the California state assembly and the California coastal commission,” he said.

“They always said, ‘we’re not ending this’.”

If the death of Brancheau – who was pulled under water, severely injured and drowned by Tilikum at the Orlando park – was the beginning of SeaWorld’s downward spin, the momentum picked up when Blackfish became a worldwide hit. The award-winning film, which featured Hargrove and several other trainers, examined the circumstances of the tragedy and explored the alleged behavioural difficulties of orcas confined to tiny pens, including Tilikum.

Park attendance dropped by about a million per year, high-profile musical acts pulled out of park appearances in protest and SeaWorld’s profits plummeted by $10m in the wake of the movie. SeaWorld admitted last month that it had paid employees to pose as activists to infiltrate animal rights groups, including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and incite illegal acts against the company.

Hargrove, while among those praising Manby’s declaration, said he was also suspicious of its timing, which comes just days after SeaWorld announced Tilikum’s imminent death from a bacterial infection.

Despite the troubles, Hargrove believes that SeaWorld, which unveiled a new general partnership with the Humane Society of the United States in the Thursday announcement, could still have a promising future.

“If they chop off the right heads, it would show they really did make a conscious effort to make a clean start, with a fresh vision,” he said. “You definitely have the right leaders out there that can turn it into a Universal Studios-style theme park about sea life, and it can be an incredibly successful park without all the controversy of people saying I don’t feel right about animals being in what are essentially cages.”

Hargrove noted that although SeaWorld had previously pledged not to take any more orcas from the wild, and that the breeding programme would end immediately, one of the company’s whales, Takara, was pregnant and the calf would live its life in captivity.

“My question now is, and I have to be careful because I don’t want it to look like I’m not praising Joel Manby’s decision, is what the control measures are. Are we going to hear in six months, ‘Oops, we don’t know how this whale got pregnant?’ What control measures are there to back up this statement that you’re ending this programme and ending it for a reason?”

SeaWorld said Takara and other remaining whales would live out the rest of their lives in the park because releasing them to the wild from captivity would probably kill them.

In a letter to the Los Angeles Times, Manby said Americans’ attitudes about orcas had “changed dramatically” and that his company’s decision was because it wanted to move away from theatrical shows and concentrate instead on “new, inspiring and natural orca encounters”.